a listen to [Music] that hello everybody today on the channel I continue my quest to experience all of the modern-day Porsche

GT products. We began a couple of months ago with the car that kickstarted it, the 996.1 GT3. I then followed it up with that

car's direct successor, the 996.2 GT3, and I even got to drive the mighty, the magical, and rather

mad 996.2 GT2. I then recently came forward in time a little bit to drive what is still

presently the pre-generation of car, the 991.2 GT3. But today we're back to chronological order as I am experiencing

for the first time in a long time, the 997.1 GT3. But this particular car has an

ace up its sleeve, which, if what I've read is correct, means that it should be something truly special.

[Music] [Music] So then, regardless of whether you've been watching my series to date or not,

I'm fairly certain you know what a 911 GT3 is. If for no other reason than over

the last 10 years, anybody and everybody has been clamoring over one another to get their hands on one. And where a

decade and a half ago these were niche, weird, bespoke cars bought by track fiends and dedicated flat-six enthusiasts.

Today they are the darling of the collector world, but they also happen, in my opinion, to be one of those rare cars

that do deserve to be worth at least as much as they were when they were new. And why is that? Well, very simply put, the 911

GT3, for me, is the absolute best that a 911 can be. It is the product of Porsche's Motorsports Department, with

some of the earlier cars in particular being genuine homologation specials. And though by the time this car rolled

Around, I'm not sure it was actually necessary anymore; they still kept the same formula, which made the early cars

great. And so what exactly is that? Well, for this 997.1 generation car, you get the aerodynamics that make a GT3

instantly recognizable. And here they've gone for a look which is a little more closely aligned with that of the first

generation 996, and that, to me, I think makes it one of the prettiest of all the

GT3s. It also introduced the distinctive center-exit exhausts, a nice little racy touch, and again, something that separates

this from the regular Carrera. These early cars also are still based on a narrow body shell, so in comparison to

their successors, they still look like fairly small things, though nowhere near as dainty as the 996. It is, in reality,

barely any wider, only by about an inch or so. But the fact is, the way they've styled it means it just looks that

little more aggressive and purposeful. Perhaps most problematically, this car also has a now much more prominent splitter at the front, which I'm sure

does something when you are howling down the Nürburgring straight, but when you're trying to get in or out of a car park,

makes it rather difficult to deal with. As with its predecessors, you could then have the car in either Comfort or Sport

plus, with the latter being, today, often the most desirable one. And that gets you nice bucket seats here in carbon fiber

and a half cage. And if you do have a genuine Club Sport and not a conversion with an aftermarket setup, you can then

easily convert this into having a full cage. And Porsche have even gone to the effort of cutting out a little bit of

the carpet down here so you can simply tear it out should you want to fit one. For me, in a road car though, you just

don't want that for this generation. Greater attention was then paid to both the suspension and the brakes, the latter

of which are even beefier and better equipped than before, and it's the former that's maybe the most interesting

because here, for the first time in a GT product, you have adaptive dampers. What Porsche term PASM, but remember this is a

GT product, so it's not as if it's nice and soft and cosseting. When you've got the

dampers in Comfort mode, it's still a fairly firm-riding thing. But let's not beat about the bush: when

you're talking GT products, there is only one thing that people ever want to discuss, and that's the engine, which for

this generation is still a version of the mighty Mezger, the amazing flat-6, which can trace its roots all the way back to

the 993 GT1 racing program and is, in many ways, more closely related to the old air-cooled cars than it is to anything

modern. In this, the first of the 997 GT3s, it still displaces 3.6L, as it did with the

996, and it makes 415 PS—that's 409 horsepower—and 299 lb-ft of torque. When the car was then

facelifted, along with the rest of the 997 range, becoming the .2, it gained some

20 horsepower for a total of 435 PS and torque rose to 317 lb-ft—that's 430 Nm. The one and only

gearbox you can have is this six-speed manual, which has an incredibly direct and super-short throw. It's a really very

curious thing, and uh, the owner of this car, Steven, who has brought it to me very kindly today, says that it's one of those

cars where you simply cannot drive it casually, and he's absolutely right. It's not on account of that engine; it's on

account of this gearbox. It, combined with a clutch and flywheel that I'll talk more about in a minute, means that you

have to really pay attention, and with every single shift you really do want to try and get things absolutely perfect

because if you don't, the car will let you know about it. The upside, of course, is that when you do, it is the most

satisfying thing you can [Music] experience. And I would love to be able to show you exactly what all this can do,

but we're going to have to wait just a little bit longer because, unusually, where I normally have this test route

almost entirely to myself, today it's fairly busy. And you'll never guess why: someone's doing some filming. Yeah,

there's a bunch of vintage cars all up and down the place, one of which is on the back of a big, flatbed tracking

vehicle, and um, they're doing something that looks reasonably proper. Exactly what they're doing, I don't know, and I do know

that if I asked them, they probably wouldn't tell me. But I also know that the second half of this route they're

not using. So, once I've got down there and I'm able to turn around and I've made sure that the road is safe and

clear, I'll have a little bit of fun. However, when I do finally get to put my foot down, the experience this car is

going to deliver is going to be one unlike just about any other 997.1 GT3. I was doing a little bit of reading

yesterday on the 997 GT3, trying to do a little bit of research. And as I have

driven one of these cars before, albeit a long time ago, I actually broke with tradition and decided to read another

review of one; specifically, a group test by Evo magazine comparing the 996.2 with the 997.1 and 2, in which they said that not only

Was the difference between the 996 and 997 noticeable, but that the 997.1 was one of their favorite handling cars?

But they couldn't ignore the savagery and pace of the engine from the 997.2, which had a 3.8L in it, hence its

increase in both power and torque. And so, what they would have described as the perfect 997 GT3 is the chassis and setup

of a .1, which is a little more road-biased, but with the engine of a .2. And that is exactly what we have here

today, because in the back of this you will find a 3.8L from the 997.2. Other than that and the flywheel

from a 997 GT3 RS, the car is basically standard. So it should make for very, very interesting and entertaining

driving. Your next question I know is going to be why exactly does the car have a 3.8L in it? Well, Steven bought this

car some 14 years ago from an official Porsche dealer, and as soon as he got it, he noticed that when it got warm and the

oil thinned out a little bit, the car made some unusual noises. But GT3s do that; they make a lot of unusual noises.

Listen to a 996 GT3 Clubsport at idle, for example, and the thing sounds like it's absolutely knackered. But that is just

how they are. And that was what Porsche kept telling Steven—that is how they are. But Steven is no fool; he knew that the

car wasn't quite right, but they refused to accept that there was something amiss with it. He himself knows about cars

because he has a car dealership, James Glen, based in Airdrie, a little bit outside of Glasgow. They have a nice,

modest selection of interesting cars and even a YouTube channel that he's been trying to grow over the last couple of

years, but has realized is, um, actually a fair bit of work. And so I'm very grateful that he's decided to sort of

Cut out the middleman and just bring his car to me. Anyway, over time this noise got worse and worse and worse until he

could no longer bear it. And so it went off to the specialists at Firm Sport, who very quickly diagnosed the problem: the

engine had, at some point, been half rebuilt. The offside bank, I believe it is, had been taken off and then when it was

put back on, too much sealant had been applied. This had then got into the oil and gunked up one of the oil galleries,

meaning that a very small portion of the engine was then overheating, hence the horrible noise. What is even worse about

this is that, in the car's history, Steven has an invoice for the rebuild of that side of the engine done by

[Music] Porsche, but £18,000 and quite a bit of time later, he got his car back with a 3.8 in it. So now,

at long last, thank you for being patient, shall we see what this combination is like? I think we shall.

[Music] Oh my, I can see why those guys were quite so enamored with this engine; it's

absolutely magical. Has loads of punch even from low down at 2-3,000 RPM, but

then at 5,000 gets a little bit of a second wind. It's not quite as big a

difference as some other 911s I've driven—not, I think, as big a difference as, say, in the early

997s—but it then pulls real hard all the way to that redline, which is marked up here, just under 8,100 RPM. This is an absolute powerhouse of an engine.

It is not so capable that things start flying past

you like you're at warp speed, but it is more than enough to give you plenty on just about any road I could ever

Think of four number things this car will do. Not 0 to 62 in about 4.1 seconds, presuming

this has the same time as the later dot two. The top speed is then just over 190 mph, but maybe surprisingly it's not

as light as I thought it was. With, depending on who you ask, this tipping the scales at somewhere between

1450 and 1500 kilos. Naturally rev matching or heel and toe is an absolute doddle. The pedals have been set up

perfectly for it, but the big shock for me is the steering. You see in that 996.1

GT3 was very, very light, not particularly quick a rack, but still had plenty of feel and feedback. You just took a little

bit of time to adjust to it and get used to it. The 996.2 then, totally different.

Felt much, much heavier, as if there was far less assistance and it was much more direct and much more modern. This feels

like it's a bit of a step back. Feels far more like the 996.1 did than the 996.2

and I must admit it really took me by surprise because I just wasn't expecting that. As soon as I put my foot down and

I Drive The Mythical 911 GT3 That Shouldn't Exist: The 3.8L 997.1 GT3

I Drive The Mythical 911 GT3 That Shouldn't Exist: The 3.8L 997.1 GT3