Porsche 911 RSR and 911 Turbo 3.0

The 991-generation Porsche 911 RSR was launched at the 2016 Los Angeles Auto Show ahead of the 2017 World Endurance Championship season, with Porsche Motorsport making the controversial decision to move the engine ahead of the rear axle — making it, technically, the first mid-engined 911. The 4.0-litre naturally-aspirated flat-six was retained but turned around 180 degrees, with output limited by Balance of Performance to around 510 hp. LEGO® 75888 models the factory white-and-red livery used for 2017 (see Brickset 75888).

The 911 RSR's headline result was a class win at the 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans (LM-GTE Pro) for Porsche GT Team — chassis #92 driven by Michael Christensen, Kévin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor. The car also took the 2017 manufacturers' GT title in the FIA World Endurance Championship and the 2018–19 'super-season' GTE manufacturers' title. After 2019 the 991 RSR was succeeded by the 992-generation 911 RSR-19.

Porsche's decision to move the engine forward provoked considerable enthusiast debate at launch — purists argued a 911 should be rear-engined by definition. Porsche Motorsport's response was that the LM-GTE rules required mass distribution that the rear-engined road 911 simply could not deliver competitively, and that the customer 911 GT3 R (the Cup-class car) would remain rear-engined to preserve the factory-vs-customer distinction.

The 911 Turbo 3.0 — internally the 930 — was launched at the 1974 Paris Motor Show and built from 1975 to 1977. It was Porsche's first turbocharged production 911 and the first 911 to wear the wide rear-arch flares and rubber-edged 'whale tail' rear wing. Output was 260 hp from a single KKK turbocharger feeding the air-cooled flat-six — a significant figure in 1975 (see LEGO® 75888 and Brickset 75888).

The 3.0-litre 930 ran for only three model years before Porsche increased displacement to 3.3 litres for 1978 with an intercooler, taking output first to 300 hp. The 930 platform itself remained in production through to 1989 — one of the longest-serving 911 generations — but the 1974–77 3.0-litre cars are now the most collected variants for their early-Turbo character (a notoriously sudden boost-onset above 4,000 rpm and no electronic aids of any kind).

The combination of the 1974 Turbo with the 2017 RSR in 75888 isn't accidental: 911 Turbo motorsport heritage flows through the 935 Group 5 race cars of the late 1970s — themselves direct descendants of the 930 — into Porsche's modern endurance programme. The two cars share an architectural DNA across forty-three years.