Lanzante
Lanzante Is Building Porsche 930 Turbos With F1-Raced Engines
Lanzante - Creators of Automotive Unicorns
The ‘Widowmaker’ gets 1.5-liter turbo V6 TAG-Porsche engine with 750 hp. This is a name that will surprise knowledgeable car guys. Lanzante, the McLaren specialist is working on some cool restored Porsche ideas that peaked our interest. While it isn’t out in the wild yet, we’re so excited about it that it made our list anyway. Lanzante is very focused on outright performance. Remember that Lanzante Motorsport are the same people responsible for the McLaren P1 GT and the P1 LM so when they talk performance they know what they’re dead serious.
The English engineering firm is building 11 eighties-era Porsche 930s with genuine TAG-branded Porsche engines that the McLaren Formula One team used to win 25 races. Yes, real V6 TAG F1 Turbo engines. Imagine being able to tell your friends at the pub that your classic Porsche is powered by an engine that has won an F1 race. Baller.
From 1984 to 1987, Porsche built a 1.5-liter twin-turbocharged V6, branded as the TAG-Porsche TTE P01, for the McLaren MP4/2 and MP4/3. The engine produced more than 1,000 horsepower in qualifying trim, and 750 hp in race spec. In its first three years on the grid, the engine powered McLaren to two Constructors Championships and three Driver’s Championships.
McLaren sold Lanzante the 11 engines for this run of restomod Porsches. Our friends at Cosworth are restoring the engines for the program and each of the 11 examples gets a plaque in the engine bay listing its engine’s race history.
Despite the insanity under the hood, the F1-powered Porsche 930 restomod is rather subdued in terms of looks (the first one was showcased at the Rennsport Reunion recently). Wearing just a set of RUF wheels it is understated. The interior is basic with a set of bucket seats and a bunche of new gauges including a 9,000 RPM taco (did we mention it is powered by a real F1 engine).
Lanzante hasn’t given us the headline numbers yet in terms of power, performance or whether these cars will even be road legal. Even if they are detuned a lot (which they will be) this is going to be a performance monster. The only thing we really need to think about is the nickname. If the 1984 930 was called the “Widowmaker” and it only had 330 hp, then what the hell are we going to call this?
Lanzante Limited is responsible for the P1 and Senna GTR road car conversions and won Le Mans in 1995 with an F1 GTR. It's the special relationship with McLaren that we have to thank for this wildly ambitious project, as Woking has agreed to sell Lanzante eleven of the 1.5 liter twin-turbo V6 engines that its F1 team used to win 25 of 68 races, three drivers' titles, and a pair of constructors' championships in the mid-80s.
Lanzante Basics
Company: Lanzante / Located: Petersfield (United Kingdom) / Website: Lanzante.com
The Original TAG-Porsche 930
Formula 1 was a very different animal back in the 1980s; a time of limitless budgets and the infancy of forced induction. It wasn't unheard of for teams to have entire engines set up for a single qualifying lap, with 1.5-liter four cylinders putting out 1100+ horsepower thanks to boost turned up so high that the blocks would melt as the cars returned to the pits. Into this wild world stepped McLaren's new boss, Ron Dennis, charged with reversing the team's fading fortunes. Dennis needed a turbocharged engine and it needed to work in harmony with the car's chassis. That meant a brand new design, so Dennis asked Hans Metzger at Porsche to come up with the V6 and poached Williams' title sponsor, aviation and motorsports company TAG, to pay for it. Thus, the TAG-Porsche twin-turbo V6 was born.
The new engine was installed in a 930-generation 911 for testing, and that car inspired the ones that Lanzante is almost finished building now. The new 930s feature many upgrades and improvements over the original prototype, but at their cores they all feature the same thing: a twin-turbo V6 engine that once powered a McLaren Formula 1 race car. It doesn't get much more special than that, with each of the new builds featuring a plaque denoting the names of the drivers that used the engine like Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, and Keke Rosberg, as well as its race results. Among them are nine podium finishers and the winner of the 1984 British Grand Prix.
Lanzante & Cosworth Have A Daunting Task
Lanzante partnered with Cosworth to tackle the daunting task of making near-forty year-old racing engines behave themselves in a modern road car. The first change made was swapping the period turbos out for smaller ones which are quicker to spool and allow drivers to comfortably use more of the engine's rev range, though they still produce 44 lbs. of boost to the original's 54. With the new turbos comes a reduction in power, down from 750 horsepower in race trim to a more reasonable five hundred and three with 310 lb./ft. of torque. Each engine is capable of reaching 9000 rpm
The transmission also received an update, with a mid-90s Porsche 6-speed with custom gear ratios installed to handle the V6's rather unique power characteristics. The new 930s make use of modern coilover suspension but the original and perfect RUF wheels remain, with the new cars weighing in about 500 lbs. lighter than the original prototype thanks to carbon fiber hoods and engine covers with aluminum door skins.
The engines are water-cooled with radiators mounted in the nose and bespoke routing of all the necessary lines. Traction control is not included, not because the engineers couldn't incorporate it, but because they didn't want to. Top speed is 200 mph, and each one, already long-sold, costs $1,450,000 before taxes. Special, special cars.
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