Just The Brake Calipers On This Restomod Porsche 911 Cost $240,000

“Porsche could never do this” Jan Kalmar, founder of KALMAR Automotive, insisted to me as we walked around the KALMAR 9X9 on the soft turf of The Quail. He was talking about the 3D-printed brake calipers in particular, though he could have been talking about the entire car.

Modified vintage Porsches were the thing at this year’s Monterey Car Show, ranging from whimsical reimaginings like the Porsche 911 Targa Hybrid from bb/Beau to the Tuthill GT One. And if on-road Porsches aren’t your thing, you could easily grab yourself a RUF Rodeo. Singer, Tuthill, bb, and RUF are all known in the Porsche world as established brands and all were on display at Monterey Car Week.

KALMAR is relatively less known, but the 9X9 on display wants to be the most extreme version of a 911-shaped thing you can buy. If you thought a Singer was a cost-is-no-option car, just wait until you get a closer look at this.

What Is The KALMAR 9×9?

The most famous high-performance production Porsche might be the Porsche 959, a car born out of FIA racing specs. The all-wheel-drive supercar did everything that an early ’80s 911 could do and took it to its logical extremes. There was only one 959, and Porsche, for various reasons, struggled to make a real production follow-up until the Porsche Carrera GT (unless you count the two Porsche 911 GT1 Straßenversions the company built).

This means the world was deprived of a Porsche supercar for the 993 era of 911. which covers the mid-1990s.

KALMAR is solving this oversight with the 9X9. Starting with a 993 donor car, the company and its suppliers do everything possible to add power and grip, and to remove weight. It’s why the company refers to the car as a “Retro Hypercar,” combining an era-appropriate aesthetic to the best of what modern technology offers.

This means engines out of the 992 (in the trim I’m looking at it’s the 993’s Turbo S flat-six squeeze to 930 horsepower) paired to the 992’s PDK transmission. If the PDK isn’t your bag, you can spec a Sport model that’s basically a 992 GTS 4 and its seven-speed manual or, hey, why not get the Leichtbau version with the 4.0-liter six and a six-speed manual? You’ve got options.

Up front, where the frunk should be, is a Danisi Engineering-designed double-wishbone push-rod front suspension because, sure, why not? The body has the greenhouse of a 993, but both the front and rear treatments feel a little more modern to me. Of course, the body has been entirely redesigned using carbon fiber to minimize weight and maximize downforce and very little of the 993 has been retained.

In fact, other than the interior and greenhouse section, most of the car’s subframes and all of the electronics come courtesy of a new 992 Porsche 911. Oh, yeah, in order to get one 9X9 you have to sacrifice a 993 (which you provide) and a 992 (which Jan provides).

The good news is that Jan loves 911s like the rest of us, and anything that isn’t needed for the final car is going to get put back into the Porsche ecosystem for other owners to buy.

Wait, What About That Headline? The Brakes Are $240,000!?!

Actually, the brakes are more expensive than that. The $240,000 figure is just the $60k per corner for the freaking calipers. Are these calipers made out of diamonds or freakin’ mithril?

Nope. The custom-designed, massive calipers are 3D-printed lightweight titanium. These are made by a company called CARBO Brake not too far from Kalmar’s Scandanavian HQ.

I had to run the math by Jan a few times just to make sure I was hearing it correctly. He insisted they cost about $60k a set and, to his main point, while Porsche might technically be capable of such engineering, it could never justify the cost of doing it to save a little unsprung weight.

Why do any of this? I’ll let the company’s website explain:

The rear callipers weigh just 1.8kg – some 51 per cent lighter than the original 993 example – while the fronts tip the scales at 2.0kg – 44 per cent lighter than a factory 993. Of course, unsprung mass is reduced too, with almost 10kg of rotating mass lost. In addition, the stiffness of our callipers is similar to that found on top level single seater racing cars. The body of the calliper itself is crafted from special motorsport-grade forged aluminium before being CNC machined. It is also nickel plated to provide an additional heat barrier and as a result, it is capable of a working temperature between 200 and 300°C. This is a whopping 200 per cent more than rival cast or forged aluminium products on the market.

You’ll also have to pay for ceramic brake discs and pads and fluid, but compared to the extremely bespoke calipers the price of that is all nominal.

So How Much Does The Whole Car Cost?

All of this is utterly ridiculous and over-the-top and probably too much car for me, but I do kind of like it. The 993 is one of my favorite 911s and I’m a big 959 fan. If you’re going to combine them into one car and charge a stupendous amount for them, why not go all the way? Why not embrace the inherent insanity of the moment and see just how insane you can get?

This is not a car that you look at and rev your Onan to while parking it outside of Harrods. It’s meant to be driven harder than anyone you’ve probably ever met can drive. And that ain’t cheap.

According to Jan, the price is about $2 million to start, though timing and currency fluctuations will impact this. Additionally, they only plan to make a few of these every year, so you might as well just fork over a little extra to get it exactly right.

This cost doesn’t include the 993. You’re going to have to buy a 993 if you don’t already own one, though given how much of the car is going to get chucked I wouldn’t necessarily fork over a fortune to get a Concours-grade donor car.

My suggestion is to get one that costs about $60k or, roughly, one caliper’s worth of 911.

[Ed Note: My suggestion is that you then just drive that 993 and save yourself $2 million, but that’s just me. -DT]. 

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