What on Earth is this Porsche prototype? Taycan ‘GT4 RS’ spied testing
Porsche is testing a widened, winged-up Taycan. What on Earth for and who actually wants it?
Porsche appears to be preparing an ultra high performance, even more extreme version of its electric super saloon, off the back of the already quick, already compromised £186k Taycan Turbo GT. The car presents like a Turbo GT, albeit one that’s been covered in epoxy and used to ram raid Manthey Racing at full tilt – a proper Taycan ‘RS’.
So extreme is this Taycan that all and sundry are asking, what actually is this? Is this a technical exercise – a bitten thumb at Xiaomi’s disruptor, the SU7 Ultra? Or is this a car Porsche eventually intends to sell? First let’s look at the car in greater detail. It’s not like a version of a car you could mistake for the standard one at a distance, like say the standard Taycan Turbo GT (without the Weissach Package and its big wing).
It’s a monster – wide arches with giant vents atop them as well as on the side of the car, canards, a huge splitter with central supports, an enormous wing and a gigantic rear diffuser. Oh and obviously with the arches, a widened track width with giant wheels and tyres to fill them, the rears with wheel covers, which perhaps is the best suggestion among all this that it is indeed Manthey Racing that’s responsible for this creation. A quick look through the windows reveals a giant roll cage. It's likely this prototype, as per the Turbo GT Weissach, omits rear seats too.
In terms of power, it’s anyone’s guess. The Turbo GT has 1020bhp courtesy of two electric motors. When that car was in the prototype testing stages, rumours had it that this was a tri-motor car. As it transpired, the Turbo GT ‘made do’ with two motors.
This then could finally be the long-rumoured tri-motor Taycan. It might need to be if Porsche is indeed chasing the 1500bhp+ Xiaomi. Two motors on the rear axle will allow for greater torque vectoring capability and therefore even sharper handling in this hottest of hot Taycans.
Why are we wondering what it’s for then? Well, because surely Porsche can’t be under the impression there are enough customers for a £200k+, 1200bhp+ Taycan RS to justify the development costs. There aren’t enough as it is for the £186k, Turbo GT; even less for the even more expensive, two-seat Weissach version. They are technically extraordinarily impressive but they just don’t seem to be resonating with buyers.
The Taycan fundamentally works best and is its most appealing in its most basic £88k form – the one that’s the most honest about what it is, which is an exotic-looking, composed, somewhat sporting saloon with a favourable benefit-in-kind rate to tempt in the company directors. But not even this has managed to stimulate stalling sales, or escape fears about depreciation, range and the march of obsolescence.
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So what place would this thing have were it brought to market? Even more extreme than the Turbo GT, no doubt even faster, even more expensive and even more compromised in terms of range – all the things the actual Taycan market, which is struggling as is, doesn’t appear to want. A 1200bhp+, £200k Taycan is surely a car without a buyer.
The point we hope then, for Porsche’s sake, is that this is not a car it wants to sell. Rather, we hope it’s another big swing in the slightly pointless appendage waving contest that’s been escalating in this large electric saloon market for years, first with Tesla and most recently, with the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra.
