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Manthey-Tuned Porsche 911 GT2 RS Dominates Road Atlanta

Nearly a decade after it first detonated onto the supercar scene, the Porsche 911 GT2 RS is still humiliating newer machinery—and now it has another lap record to prove it.

At Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, a Manthey-equipped GT2 RS clocked a blistering 1:22.649 lap, edging the previous production-car benchmark by two-tenths of a second. That may sound like a margin small enough to lose in pit lane chatter, but around Road Atlanta—a circuit known for its fast elevation changes and commitment-testing corners—it’s a meaningful statement. Especially considering the car in question traces its roots back to 2017.

The weapon of choice was no ordinary GT2 RS. Fitted with the factory-approved Manthey Performance Kit and riding on road-legal Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R N0 tires, the twin-turbocharged rear-engine monster found an entirely new level of capability. Compared with the standard GT2 RS that lapped the same circuit in 2019 on identical-spec rubber, the upgraded car carved a staggering 2.2 seconds from its previous effort.

Behind the wheel for all three record attempts was Porsche ambassador and former factory ace Jörg Bergmeister, who knows a fast 911 better than most people know their own driveway. According to Bergmeister, the GT2 RS still delivers an experience that feels anything but dated.

“Even almost 10 years after its introduction, the power delivery of the twin-turbo flat-six engine is still thrilling,” he said. And while the engine remains the headline act, the real magic appears to come from the Manthey-developed chassis and aero package. Increased downforce and suspension revisions allowed Bergmeister to brake deeper into corners and get back on throttle earlier, transforming an already ferocious 911 into something even sharper.

But Porsche didn’t stop there.

The newer Porsche 911 GT3 RS with Manthey Kit also turned Road Atlanta into its personal playground, posting a 1:23.932 lap time and claiming the title of fastest naturally aspirated production car ever to circle the circuit. That’s remarkable not because the GT3 RS is quick—we already knew that—but because it managed the feat without turbochargers, hybrid assistance, or electrification. Just a screaming flat-six, a massive rear wing, and enough aerodynamic grip to embarrass race cars.

Bergmeister described the car’s aero performance in almost disbelieving terms. With up to 1,000 kilograms of downforce available, the GT3 RS corners with the kind of violence normally reserved for GT-class competition machinery. The suspension, meanwhile, absorbs curbing without upsetting the chassis, helping drivers exploit every ounce of performance.

And then there’s the newest arrival: the Porsche 911 GT3 fitted with the Manthey Kit. While it may sit lower in the 911 hierarchy, it still managed to stop the clock at 1:24.639—an eye-opening 1.8 seconds quicker than the previous-generation GT3’s earlier benchmark.

What these laps ultimately demonstrate is that Porsche’s obsession with incremental engineering remains unmatched. The Manthey packages don’t reinvent these cars; they refine them with surgical precision. More grip here, more aero stability there, and suddenly already legendary track weapons become even more devastating.

In an era increasingly dominated by electrified hypercars chasing headline power figures, Porsche is proving there’s still immense performance left to unlock from a rear-engined sports car with a flat-six engine and a stopwatch.

Source: Porsche

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Rare Shades 7 Turns Queens Into Porsche’s Rolling Color Archive

There are concours events built around horsepower, rarity, and seven-figure auction values. Then there’s Rare Shades, the annual gathering from 000 Magazine that treats color itself as the headline act. And somehow, that makes it feel even more obsessive—in the best possible Porsche way.

What began eight years ago as an ambitious niche concept from 000 Magazine co-founder Alex Palevsky has evolved into one of the most visually arresting celebrations of the Porsche universe anywhere in the world. Its seventh edition, staged this spring inside Queens’ cavernous Wildflower Studios, proved that Porsche enthusiasm no longer revolves solely around lap times and heritage badges. Increasingly, it revolves around self-expression.

And paint.

A lot of paint.

The latest Rare Shades transformed the East River waterfront into what essentially felt like a live-action Porsche color chart exploded into three dimensions. Inside the immense gallery-like halls of Wildflower Studios—a creative complex founded by Robert De Niro, Raphael De Niro, and developer Adam Gordon—rows of Stuttgart machinery sat under carefully controlled lighting like rolling pieces of industrial art. The setting was less traditional car show and more modern design exhibition, which, frankly, suited the premise perfectly.

Because Rare Shades isn’t really about cars in the conventional sense. It’s about what happens when enthusiasts stop viewing a 911 as transportation and start viewing it as a canvas.

That philosophy was visible everywhere. Nearly 100 paint colors appeared across the display field, ranging from iconic heritage tones to deeply obscure Paint-to-Sample experiments that sounded more like modern art installations than factory finishes. More than 20 shades of blue were represented. Sixteen greens appeared under the studio lights. Pinks and purples occupied their own strange and wonderful corner of the spectrum.

Some of the standouts bordered on mythical. Urbanbamboo Chromaflair shimmered with the sort of surreal depth usually reserved for concept cars and custom guitars. Moonstone—known in Germany as Flieder—delivered the kind of soft, washed-out Seventies violet that somehow feels both nostalgic and wildly contemporary. And Jadegreen, first made famous on the 1973 IROC-spec 911 Carrera RSR piloted by racing legend A. J. Foyt, looked every bit as rebellious today as it must have half a century ago.

The event’s underlying message became impossible to miss: Porsche’s history isn’t just written in engineering milestones. It’s written in pigment.

That idea was reinforced by 000 Magazine Editor-in-Chief Pete Stout, who pointed to the late 1960s and early ’70s as the high-water mark for Porsche experimentation. During that period, buyers could choose from sprawling lists of standard and optional colors that mirrored broader cultural shifts happening in fashion, art, and industrial design. The cars became snapshots of their era.

Then, inevitably, restraint took over.

For a while, conservative silvers, blacks, and dark blues dominated dealership lots. But Porsche’s modern Paint-to-Sample resurgence has reopened the floodgates for individuality, and Rare Shades exists as both celebration and proof of concept. In today’s increasingly digital, algorithmically filtered world, color has become a surprisingly personal statement again.

And nowhere was that more obvious than in 000 Magazine’s ongoing collaboration with Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur and the Sonderwunsch division. Displayed prominently were several low-volume, highly curated models developed alongside 000, including specially commissioned versions of the 718 Spyder, 911 Turbo S, and the US-market-only 718 Spyder RS.

Finished in hues like Darkseablue, Brewstergreen, Albertblue, and stark contrast White, the cars demonstrated something Porsche understands better than almost any manufacturer: exclusivity doesn’t always require more horsepower. Sometimes it just requires restraint, confidence, and the willingness to approve a daring paint code.

But Rare Shades 7’s greatest success wasn’t the machinery itself. It was the crowd surrounding it.

Unlike the occasionally stuffy atmosphere that can plague high-end collector events, Rare Shades drew a remarkably young and stylistically diverse audience. Longtime air-cooled obsessives mingled with first-time attendees who may have arrived more interested in aesthetics and design culture than Nürburgring lap records. And somehow, the event made those groups feel equally welcome.

That inclusivity is what gives Rare Shades its identity. Color is subjective. Nobody can really be wrong about it. One person’s perfect specification is another’s visual catastrophe, and that tension fuels conversation in a way horsepower figures never could.

In an enthusiast world increasingly dominated by resale values and social-media flex culture, Rare Shades feels refreshingly human. It reminds you that the emotional side of car culture still matters—that sometimes the strongest connection between a person and a machine can be something as simple as the exact shade of green they fell in love with as a kid.

And for one spring afternoon in Queens, Porsche’s rainbow-colored universe felt bigger, younger, and more alive than ever.

Source: Porsche

News

Manthey Gives the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT the GT3 RS Treatment

The first time Porsche handed its Nürburgring whisperers at Manthey the keys to an EV, the result wasn’t subtle. It was inevitable.

Meet the new Manthey Kit for the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT with Weissach Package—a track-focused retrofit that transforms Porsche’s already absurd electric super sedan into something that sounds suspiciously like a GT3 RS with a battery pack. And because this is Manthey we’re talking about, the upgrades aren’t cosmetic theater. They’re stopwatch weapons.

The headline figure says everything you need to know: a 6:55.533 lap around the Nürburgring Nordschleife. That’s not just fast for an EV executive car—it’s violently fast. With Porsche development driver Lars Kern behind the wheel, the Manthey-equipped Taycan shaved more than 12 seconds off the standard Turbo GT Weissach’s previous record and dropped over nine seconds from the category benchmark. On a track where single seconds can consume engineering departments whole, twelve is an eternity.

What’s perhaps most impressive is how the Manthey treatment follows the same philosophy that made the company’s 911 GT kits legendary: grip first, ego second.

The standard Taycan Turbo GT already feels like it’s rewriting physics in real time, but the Manthey car attacks corners with an entirely different level of composure. Aerodynamics are the centerpiece. A new rear wing with larger end plates, revised front diffuser, aggressive rear diffuser fins, underbody air deflectors, and carbon aerodiscs on the rear wheels combine to produce more than triple the downforce of the standard car.

At 124 mph, total downforce jumps from 95 kilograms to 310. Flat out at 193 mph, the car reportedly generates roughly 740 kilograms of aerodynamic load. That’s enough to make the Taycan look less like a supersedan and more like a low-flying prototype racer.

And unlike so many modern aero packages, this one isn’t designed for Instagram parking-lot credibility. Kern says the difference is immediately noticeable through the Nordschleife’s terrifying high-speed sections, particularly under braking and direction changes. Between Lauda-Links and Bergwerk, he carried 14 km/h more speed than during the previous record run. Fourteen. On the Nürburgring, that’s the kind of number that gets your attention very quickly.

Manthey and Porsche didn’t stop with airflow. For the first time, the kit also tweaks the Taycan’s powertrain. Revised software for the high-voltage battery, control unit, and pulse inverters increases discharge current from 1,100 to 1,300 amps, pushing output to 600 kW and bumping Launch Control torque to 1,270 Nm.

Then there’s Attack Mode, which now delivers an extra 130 kW for ten seconds. In practical terms, the Taycan temporarily erupts to 730 kW—roughly 979 horsepower in freedom units. That’s enough thrust to make most hypercars feel like they accidentally left the parking brake engaged.

The chassis upgrades sound equally obsessive. The forged 21-inch Manthey wheels are larger yet lighter than the stock setup, helped by titanium wheel bolts that trim unsprung mass even further. Optional Pirelli P ZERO Trofeo RS tires are significantly wider than standard, while recalibrated Porsche Active Ride suspension, rear steering, and all-wheel-drive systems sharpen turn-in and stability.

Even the brakes got serious attention, with larger discs and upgraded pads engineered to repeatedly arrest nearly 5,000 pounds of electric fury without waving the white flag halfway through a hot lap.

Visually, the Manthey kit avoids the trap of turning the Taycan into a cosplay race car. Yes, there’s exposed carbon fiber everywhere—wheel-arch vents, side skirts, aero extensions, the towering rear wing—but everything appears functional, deliberate, and engineered with the same ruthless logic as the lap time itself.

That may be the most fascinating thing about this Taycan. It represents a philosophical shift for Porsche’s EV future. Until now, electric performance cars have largely relied on brute-force acceleration to impress. The Manthey Taycan proves there’s another path: one built around aerodynamic efficiency, chassis precision, thermal consistency, and repeatable track performance.

In other words, it’s behaving exactly like a Porsche.

And maybe that’s the real breakthrough here. The Manthey kit doesn’t simply make the Taycan Turbo GT faster. It gives Porsche’s electric flagship something far more valuable in enthusiast circles: credibility earned one terrifyingly quick lap at a time.

Source: Porsche

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