Porsche 908-04 Longtail – Vision GT Hommage (Part One)

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A skilled group of professional car designers has been working on a side project after work hours for the last few years.  When not designing vehicles for a Chinese car brand, this group led by Alan Derosier has created magic in the form of not one — but two Vision Gran Turismo fantasy concepts.  They took the VGT idea to heart and applied it to one of the most storied brands in racing history: Porsche.  For licensing and rights reasons, Porsche does not appear anywhere in the SONY Polyphony Digital Gran Turismo game series.  As such, they were not one of the two-dozen carmakers who created a special design prototype for gamers to race.

Bummer, right?  Well, enthusiasts to the rescue.  We’re happy to see Porsche’s official newsroom has given them a bit of recognition and glory for their incredible design achievement.  This is extra good because Porsche is known to be quite litigious when it comes to enforcing their trademarks.

Here is the first of two racecars intended to be a futuristic, perhaps 2020, idea of an LMP1 car.  The contrasts between these racers and Porsche’s actual 919 Le Mans winner is stark.  This 908-04 Longtail harks back to the days when aerodynamics were more of an art and less of a science as they are today.  Hunches and aeronautical experience, plus track feedback, is what informed the original 908 LH to grow its giant tail spike.  Today, the rules and the Mulsanne chicanes on the Le Mans track make ultimate high-speed slipperiness less important than it was in the 1960s.

The RSR variant, discussed in next article, is more relevant to the tracks and rules of endurance racing today.

Even so, as the Chiron chases 300-mph in a road car, Porsche may dust off some of these ideas if it hopes to keep pace.

Porsche 908-04 Longtail – Vision GT Hommage

The Porsche 908/04 concept is the result of team work with contributions from five key people: Alan Derosier (Exterior Designer), Marcos Beltrao (Exterior Modeler / Rendering), Martin Peng (Component Modeler), Guillermo Mignot (Interior Designer), and Tom Wheatley (Image Retoucher). They all work for a Chinese automotive brand – and they all share a passion for a sports car manufacturer based in Suttgart-Zuffenhausen.