Daily Slideshow: 911s Tear it Up on Nevada Sand Dunes
Love Porsche? Want to go off-roading but don't want to do it in a Cayenne? Kelly-Moss has just the 911 for you.
Porsches are Rally Cars
We don't have any proof that the first person who bought a Porsche took it off-road but it sounds legit. Porsche won the Targa Florio, held on pretty sketchy public roads, in 1956, 1959, 1960, 1964, and from 1966-1970. Polish driver Sobiesław Zasada used a 912 to win the European Rally Championship for Group 1 touring cars in 1967, in 1968 Vic Elford drove a 911T to capture Porsche's first overall win at the Monte Carlo Rally, and in 1970 Porsche won the International Championship for Manufacturers, the forerunner to the World Rally Championship, for the first time. The advent of the four-wheel-drive 911 in the 1980s saw a 911 take top honors at the punishing Paris-Dakar rally in 1984, and again in 1986 with the legendary 959. In recent years 911s driven by Jeff Zwart have taken five class wins at Pikes Peak, on both dirt and pavement. All of which brings us to Kelly-Moss Road and Race.
Elk’s Club
Actually, it wasn't history that urged Kelly-Moss to churn out the 911-shaped dune buggies you see here, it was a customer. As Jeff Stone, president of Kelly-Moss, recently related to Autoweek: “So, the first car, the guy walked in off the street, never met him before in my life, and he said, ‘I hear you guys build really cool cars. Can you build me a 911 I can drive on gravel roads and if I get an elk I can throw it up on the roof?'” Stone's response? “That’s no dumber than anything else anyone’s ever asked us to do, so why not?”
Gray Lightning
Kelly-Moss had been building road racing Porsches for dozens of years, including running a factory-backed program, so they weren't ones to back away from a challenge. What's the key ingredient to converting a 911 to off-road use? “Really good dampers,” Stone asserted. The team at Kelly-Moss also modified the control arms those dampers mount to, relocated suspension mounting points and modified the overhang, both front, and rear, to allow steeper approach angles, and added skid plates protect the 911s vulnerable bits. The gray 911, the one Kelly-Moss says, "started as a 'Rat Rod' off-road car," is rear-wheel drive. It "started as an old, beat up, raced-out and used-up 911 that needed everything except a chassis,” Andy Kilcoyne of Kelly-Moss related. It's currently powered by 3.6-liter Varioram engine from a 993, and fitted with a with a 915 close-ratio 5-speed manual transmission and a limited-slip differential. And a roof rack—elk are heavy.
White Lightning
In contrast to the gray car, the white one has all four wheels driven. No part of the car was left untouched. “The VICCI car (the white one) has these Reiger state-of-the-art rally dampers that are just really awesome," Stone shared. "It’s a very, very long-travel shock and a long-travel spring package. They are three-, four-, sometimes five-way adjustable, and they’re remote-reservoir that’s piggybacked onto the bottom of the damper.” Add to that a completely gone over 3.8-liter flat-six with Mahle pistons and Carillo rods handling the power dished out by an Eaton supercharger—for a reported 430hp and 400 lb-ft of torque at the wheels. The wheels are Braid Rally units and wear BFGoodrich KO2 off-road tires. Kelly-Moss showed the white car at SEMA this year in Las Vegas. You know that saying about Vegas? Kelly-Moss does too so they brought both cars to an area north of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the pictures you see here.
Green Lightning
How'd the tandem of 911 take to the dunes? “It’s amazing how well they can work,” Stone enthused. “You know, a Porsche that normally doesn’t even like to see a gravel road, to come out here and run through sand dunes all day and not get stuck and not break and they just keep going, that’s amazing,” he added. Sold? Great, all you have to do is forgo that Cayenne purchase and use the money for a custom 911 street-rally vehicle, right? Not exactly. So how much then? “It really depends,” answered Stone. “On average, I would say you can start a build for about $150,000 and you can go up to $600,000. It just depends on what you want to do. So I think this car, the (white) VICCI car, is in the mid-threes. And this car (the gray) is about $250K,” he clarified. "And, of course, you have to have a donor car, so if someone brings us a donor car that’s fine, we keep donor cars in stock -- we always have four or five or six Porsche 911s that are excellent cars to start with.” One-stop shopping, the only thing you have to supply is an elk.
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