- Porsche’s V-10 in the Carrera GT was originally built for a race car
- Just one example of the race car, known as the LMP2000, was built
- Video footage of the LMP2000 and its loud V-10 has been released by Porsche
Porsche in 2000 launched the Carrera GT with a naturally aspirated 5.5-liter V-10 that was unique to the car. However, the engine wasn’t originally intended for that purpose.
Instead, it was originally developed for a Le Mans sports prototype race car that was canceled before its first competition. The car was known as the LMP2000, or 9R3 as it was referred to internally, and Porsche didn’t even mention the car publicly until years later.
Only the one example was ever built, a year before the Carrera GT made its debut on the world stage at the 2000 Paris auto show. It currently sits in the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, and Porsche recently marked the car’s 25th anniversary by taking it out on the company-owned Weissach test track.
The automaker even invited one of the car’s original test drivers, Alan McNish, for the occasion.
Porsche in the late 1990s was already successfully competing in top-level endurance racing, including in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, with the 911 GT1 and LMP1-98 race cars. The LMP2000 was developed as the successor to those cars, and was due to make its motorsports debut in 2000.
However, Porsche with its limited budget and staff resources at the time canceled the project to focus on development of the first Cayenne, a money maker that would eventually give Porsche the funds it needed to launch the Carrera GT, using some of the parts developed for the LMP2000, including of course the V-10.
The V-10 was derived from an earlier design displacing just 3.5 liters, which Porsche had designed for Formula 1 in the early 1990s but never used. Porsche was supplying a V-12 to the Footwork Arrows F1 team in 1991, but the automaker pulled out following a disastrous run that season. The V-10 was designed to replace the overweight V-12 but Porsche was already out of F1 before development could be completed.
The V-10 would eventually power the Carrera GT, but it would take more than a decade to do so.
