I can't believe I am putting this in writing - as this car ended the BPR series!
I hated it with every moral fibre in me; rationalised all that was evil about it; loathed its rule-breaking; sneered at the stupidly impractical road version; baffled by the terrible first season paintjob; and to top it all off - it stole from me many years of watching the greatest car ever made (McLaren F1).
Yet as I watch the 1997 Le Mans video every now and then, I simply love the original 1996 body Porsche 911 GT1, as it appeared in customer hands in 1997.
Forget about the ugly, fat, overweight looking works EVO version, and concentrate on the simple lines of the original GT1 - there's a lot to like.
As a racing car, it really looks the ducks nuts when in the company of equals like the Mercedes, Nissan, Panoz, McLaren and Lotus.
It has a pretty basic Porsche turbo engine, and while hardly revolutionary in design, it seems perrenially modern to look at.
Best of all, were the customer paintjobs - from subtle Roock racing to the revolting North American paintjobs, it was no longer Goliath but instead a gaudy work-horse for the everyday racer.
From the very beginning, it wasn't a very good car, but like all Porsches, it found a race track somewhere in the world for years to come, outliving every other car from that era.
It is far from my favourite car, but I love it now for what it is - something I did not think possible even five years ago.
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Good thread topic.
