Porsche and Le Mans go together rather well. The company has racked up 19 wins at the famed round-the-clock endurance race – more than any other manufacturer – beginning with the infamous 917K in 1970 and most recently taking the honours with the hybrid 919 in 2017.
Had things panned out a little differently around the turn of the century, it could have added another few victories to that tally. In the late 1990s, it started work on a new car for the incoming LMP900 category, which would morph into the LMP1 ruleset that served as the pinnacle of world endurance racing until a few years ago.
Porsche LMP2000 – side
The new car, the LMP2000, was to be powered by a 5.5-litre V10, derived from a Formula 1 V10 Porsche had been working on earlier in the decade but ultimately abandoned. In 1999, the car was given a shakedown at the manufacturer’s Wiessach test track, with Porsche factory drivers Allan McNish and Bob Wollek racking up around 50 miles of test time.
And then, soon after, the project was abruptly cancelled. The official line at the time was that Porsche – not in the same rude financial health in the ’90s it has been for much of the 21st century – wanted to divert more resources into improving the 911 and Boxster, as well as developing the upcoming Cayenne SUV.
Allan McNish aboard the Porsche LMP2000
A less official but oft-touted explanation is that enigmatic VW Group chairman Ferdinand Piëch nixed the project because fellow VW subsidiary Audi was working on its own Le Mans racer – the wildly dominant R8 – and he didn’t want any internal competition.
Whatever the reason, the LMP2000 was quickly squirrelled away in a secure storage unit somewhere in the bowels of Stuttgart, its existence not even officially acknowledged for years.
Eventually, Porsche stopped being coy and began sharing details about the car, but now, it’s gone one better because, finally, after a quarter of a century, it’s been brought back to life. It’s has released a short film in which McNish is reunited with the car and finally gets to drive it in anger again, at the very same track where it first had its brief shakedown.
Also present is Norbert Singer, Porsche’s long-serving motorsport boss who was overseeing the LMP2000 before it was cancelled. Wollek, tragically, was killed when he was knocked off his bike on the eve of the 2001 12 Hours of Sebring.
The film’s well worth a watch, if nothing else so you can hear that incredible naturally aspirated V10 at full chat (and for that, skip to around the 3:40 mark). Incidentally, it wasn’t quite the end for that engine. It would later be refined for road use, and dropped into the middle of one of the most incredible cars of the 21st century – the Carrera GT.
