A German tuner's 911 once out-ran the Bugatti Veyron, and one is now for sale
A workshop with a modified 911 once humbled the mightiest car company on earth
In the late 2000s, Volkswagen spent a fortune making the Bugatti Veyron the fastest car in the world. Then a small German tuner called 9ff took a Porsche 911, rebuilt it almost beyond recognition, and beat it. The result was the GT9, one of the wildest cars ever to wear a Porsche shape, and one of the rarest. Now a Gulf-liveried GT9 Clubsport is coming up for auction on Collecting Cars, which makes this a very good moment to remember just how mad it was.
What the 9ff GT9 actually is
The GT9 started as a Porsche 997-generation 911, but almost nothing about the finished car is standard. 9ff moved the engine to the middle, in the spirit of the old 911 GT1 racer, stretched the wheelbase and lengthened the tail for stability and low drag at extreme speed. Fed by a heavily reworked twin-turbo flat-six, the range topped out with the GT9-R, which made around 1,120 hp and was clocked at roughly 414 km/h, edging past the Veyron's 408 km/h. 9ff built only around 20 of the fastest versions and called it a production car, an asterisk-heavy claim, but the speed itself was entirely real.
The car for sale: the GT9 Clubsport
The example now heading to auction is the track-minded GT9 Clubsport from 2011. Built on the Porsche 997 GT3 base and running the same mid-engine layout, its 3.6-litre twin-turbo flat-six produces around 750 hp and 910 Nm, enough for a top speed near 364 km/h despite tipping the scales at just 1,240 kg. It wears a Gulf-inspired livery and sits on slick tyres, and it is exactly the kind of car that almost never comes up for public sale. When one does, on Collecting Cars with the auction starting soon, it is an event in itself.
The audacity is the whole point
It is worth pausing on how bold this was. Taking a road-going 911 and reengineering it into a mid-engined, Veyron-beating missile is the kind of thing that should not work, and 9ff did it from a workshop rather than a corporate campus. It belongs to a rich tradition of German Porsche specialists who treat the 911 as raw material, from Manthey's factory-grade upgrades to full reinventions like this one. The difference is that 9ff was not chasing a lap time or a sharper road car. It was chasing the single biggest number in the industry, and for a brief, glorious moment it won.
The last era when a garage could beat the giants
This is what makes the GT9 more than a curiosity. The late-2000s top-speed war, fought by Bugatti, SSC, Koenigsegg and, improbably, a Dortmund tuner, was the last time a small specialist could genuinely hold the fastest-car crown. That door has closed. Today's record chase belongs to corporations with vast budgets and electric power, like BYD, whose Yangwang U9 Xtreme is targeting 500 km/h with four motors and a factory behind it, while even new petrol contenders such as the Hennessey Blackbird arrive with serious corporate money attached. The GT9 is a relic of a scrappier, more romantic age of speed, when audacity could still beat a balance sheet.
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Buying a 9ff GT9 today is not about owning the fastest car in the world, because it stopped being that years ago and has since been comprehensively beaten. It is about owning a story, and a genuinely great one: the moment a small German workshop looked at the most expensive, most over-engineered car Volkswagen could build and decided a modified 911 could go faster. Then proved it.
That kind of underdog audacity is exactly what the modern, corporatised top-speed race has squeezed out, which is precisely why this car will only get more precious. A Gulf-liveried GT9 Clubsport coming to open auction is a rare chance to own a piece of the last era when a clever tuner could embarrass a giant. If that does not stir something in you, check your pulse. Go and watch the bidding.
