Written by:
Marshall Pruett
In essence, the primary changes between the 2005/2006 and 2007 RS Spyders are aerodynamic. (Photo: Porsche)
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To paraphrase a recent Editors song, ‘Blood runs through your veins, that’s where our similarity ends.’ And nothing could be more accurate when comparing the original Porsche 550 Spyder of the 1950s and the modern namesake of the model that waged war so relentlessly on the 2007 American Le Mans series. The same could also be said of the two recent variations of RS Spyder.
This car is less an evolution of previous Porsche sportscars and more of a revolutionary design – one that has served to break from the form and expectation for LMP2 cars to finish firmly behind their bigger, more powerful LMP1 brethren. These cars from the ‘second tier’ division managed to thoroughly sour the plans of rival German marque Audi, winning eight of 12 American Le Mans rounds overall. With the 2007 RS Spyder, Porsche has indeed produced a genuine ‘rule breaker’.
Conceived as the brainchild of Dr Frank-Stefan Walliser, director of Porsche Motorsport strategy, the ‘07 RS Spyder started life as a rather frumpy, hump-backed creature upon its debut at Laguna Seca in October 2005. While the lines of the car never looked quite right (and subsequently proved to be the car’s downfall when it became clear its aerodynamics weren’t up to the age of advancement its LMP1 and LMP2 competitors had exploited), the chassis, drivetrain and suspension hidden beneath the body was pioneering.
The 2005 RS Spyder was created from a clean sheet of paper, but with Porsche’s immense sportscar heritage, it was only natural for some past lessons to be applied by Walliser and his team: ‘The driver sits on the right side... wheel bearings and wheel nuts, suspension layout and focus on overall stiffness came from the experience of the past. But the RS Spyder was a complete new car with a brand new drivetrain. Also the team that worked on it was new. The focus of the project was to make a very straightforward car that is complete in every detail.’
If the 2007 RS Spyder has seen the competitive realization of the cars’ potential, its 2005/2006 predecessor was very much a ‘control’ model that Walliser’s team always intended to heavily revise. ‘It was part of the complete plan when we started the project. We said “we will do a first car” and then in the project planning we always considered a major re-work of the skin... of the final aerodynamics. And so on the first RS Spyder we concentrated not so much on the aerodynamics, but on everything beneath the skin – the mechanicals, the engine, the gearbox, the suspension and so on.
Porsche's high-revving LMP2 V8 engine has delivered a near perfect reliability record since its introduction in 2005. (Photo: Porsche)
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‘In the beginning we had some problems with the gearbox, but fixed them. When the basic mechanicals of the car were stable, we started with the new aerodynamics and had enough time to make the new bodywork so we could test and introduce it in ’07. We were already working on the new ’07 car when we started the ’06 season because we needed the lead time of nearly a year to undertake the revision work. You make the moldings first, then you have to make the parts,’ he continues.
In essence, the primary changes between the 2005/2006 and 2007/2008 RS Spyders are aerodynamic. The chassis, torsional rigidity, engine weight, wheelbase, weight distribution, gearbox (and its shifting actuation speed), suspension architecture and brakes remain unchanged.
