PORSCHE'S FLACHBAU RS TOOK 3 YEARS AND ONE CUSTOMER

Porsche's Flachbau RS took three years to build and it is going to exactly one customer. Sonderwunsch, the automaker's bespoke commissioning arm, spent that time turning a 2018 911 GT2 RS with the Weissach Package into a road legal homage to the 935/78 Moby Dick, the slantnose Le Mans racer Norbert Singer built in 1978.

That is the story here. Not the styling, but the fact that Porsche's own factory was willing to spend three years chasing a shape it last used on a works Le Mans car almost fifty years ago, for a customer who will be the only person to ever drive it.

August 14, 2026. One Car, One Customer.

Porsche revealed the Flachbau RS on August 14, 2026, as a one off, road legal 911 GT2 RS built entirely around a single client's commission. The car pairs a slantnose front end inspired by the 935/78 with 1,221 pounds of downforce and a stripped, race style cabin.

Porsche's own description of the build calls it a reinterpretation, not a recreation, of the slantnose silhouette and racing DNA that made the 935/78 famous, with every decision on the car, from the aerodynamic concept to the lightweight construction, driven by a desire to optimise both performance and appearance. The build drew on the Sonderwunsch department, Style Porsche, Weissach's development engineers, Porsche Motorsport and Manthey, the tuner best known for the road legal GT2 RS Clubsport. It is the same factory versus workshop tension FO tracked when Porsche's GT3 Weissach Package squared off against Akira Nakai's 493 horsepower RWB Tsubasa last month, except this time the factory built the widebody itself.

Daniel Arsham and Akira Nakai Got There First

Porsche is not the first name to put a slantnose nose back on a modern 911. Daniel Arsham and Akira Nakai unveiled the first slantnose RWB build, the RWBA, on a 964 at the Porsche Experience Center Tokyo in April 2023, three years before Sonderwunsch finished the Flachbau RS.

Arsham and Nakai's car used fiberglass fenders and an Arsham Green interior to chase the same silhouette that Norbert Singer's engineers originated for racing, not art. Sonderwunsch's version skips the fiberglass for factory grade panels and swaps a gallery opening for one owner who commissioned the car outright. Same nose, opposite process.

A Plaque on the Passenger Side Reads Werksunikat 2026

A commemorative plaque on the passenger side of the Flachbau RS reads Werksunikat 2026, Flachbau RS, marking the car as a single factory built example. Porsche brought designer Grant Larson out of retirement specifically to shape it, working with Style Porsche to translate Norbert Singer's 1978 solution, bodywork that cut six centimetres off the lower half of the 935 to beat the era's width regulations, into panels that fit a modern GT2 RS chassis.

The original 935/78 earned its Moby Dick nickname for its size and its long overhangs, not its color, and Rolf Stommelen and Manfred Schurti drove it to eighth overall at that year's Le Mans despite engine trouble, after the car had already won the Silverstone 6 Hours by seven laps. Porsche painted the new Flachbau RS in the same Grand Prix White, added a U shaped contrast graphic across the bonnet, and reshaped the wheel arches around wider rubber. Carbon fiber bucket seats carry Flachbau RS lettering stitched over an outline of the Nurburgring.

This Is Not a Concept Car. Visvim Just Ran the Same Play.

The Flachbau RS will never see a stage or a showroom floor, which is the point Porsche is making by building it at all. Visvim made a version of that same argument in fashion this month, when its womenswear line WMV fronted the 2026 Motors Club lookbook, a capsule Hiroki Nakamura built around his own vintage car and motorcycle collection rather than a marketing brief.

Both brands are betting that a real object with a real owner reads truer than a press release. Sonderwunsch's version of that bet cost three years of engineering time on a single car nobody outside Porsche will ever drive.

Call the Flachbau RS overrated as a business move. One car, three years, zero units for sale, is a rounding error against Porsche's annual volume. Call it underrated as a signal. A department willing to spend that long chasing a nose Norbert Singer drew in 1978 just told every tuner still selling slantnose kits that the factory can build the same silhouette itself, slower and on purpose.