Porsche 911 GT3 turns 25

The Porsche 911 GT3 celebrates its 25th anniversary and spotlights the four generations presented to date.

Born of racing but built for the street, the 911 GT3 represents the evolution of a lineage that began in 1973 with the homologation special of the original 911 Carrera RS.

And like the Carrera RS, the GT3, along with the more hardcore GT3 RS, is the car most closely associated with Porsche's 911 racers. As such, it is powered by a naturally aspirated engine and has none of the special features found in the rest of the 911 series. As Porsche puts it, the GT3 continues the Porsche tradition of building “pure, uncompromising sports cars.”

The basic recipe is rear-wheel drive, lightweight construction, high-downforce aerodynamics, and a chassis designed specifically for circuit driving. Porsche has stuck to this in each generation and will hopefully continue to do so in the future.

The original GT3 was based on the 996 generation 911 and debuted at the 1999 Geneva Motor Show. It combined a high-revving 3.6-liter flat-six closely related to the engines used in motorsports, especially the unit of the Le Mans-winning 911 GT1 monster.

Porsche test driver and rally legend at the time, Walter Rohr, drove the car around the Nürburgring in 7:56.33, the first production car to do so in under 8 minutes. It was a sensation at the time and is still impressive today, considering the car had only 355 horsepower. Unfortunately, Americans had to wait another four years to get their first taste of the car.

The second generation GT3 was based on the 997-generation 911 and was unveiled in 2006; it stuck with the 3.6-liter flat-six, but increased output to 415 hp. Adaptive dampers became standard equipment, and the brakes were significantly strengthened.

Also new were center-mounted exhaust tips, now a GT3 staple, and a Sport mode that allowed the exhaust to flow freely and reduce the harshness of traction control.

The third-generation GT3 was based on the 991-generation 911 and debuted in 2013; the GT3 was the first model without a manual transmission, a significant departure from previous 911s. Instead, Porsche decided to equip it with a dual-clutch unit as standard equipment. This upset some traditionalists, so Porsche brought back the manual transmission in the somewhat more modest GT3 Touring, which appeared in 2017.

The car's first year had teething problems. The new 475-horsepower 3.8-liter flat-six experienced several fires at the hands of customers, but fortunately no injuries were reported. Porsche quickly put corrective measures in place and took the corrective action of replacing all engines in vehicles that had already been delivered. Eventually, Porsche will upgrade to a 500-horsepower 4.0-liter flat-six in the GT3 after a mid-cycle refresh.

Now in its fourth generation, the GT3 is based on the 992-generation 911 and debuted in 2021. It inherited its predecessor's 4.0-liter flat-six with a maximum output of 502 hp. The car offered buyers a choice of manual or dual-clutch automatic transmission from the outset.

A major change was the use of a double wishbone front axle, adapted from the suspension of the 911 RSR endurance race car. This improved the lateral stability of the GT3's front end and brought the entire car together in a way that the current model needed. Also not to be overlooked is the rear wing, which is the first to use swan-neck struts. This is a design that maximizes the surface area of the underside of the wing, meaning more low-pressure air and consequently more downforce.