Porsche's Spectacular 917 Living Legend Concept Is Tribute to a Legendary Race Car

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Porsche's reimagined racer celebrates 50 years since the Le Mans–winning 917 was introduced, and it looks damn good.

UPDATE 5/3/19: Porsche has released a bunch of new photos of the 917 concept, giving us a look at it from every angle and a much closer view of some of the details. We have added the photos to a gallery and updated the story with a bit of new information.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the absolutely iconic Porsche 917 race car. Introduced in 1969, among its many racing titles was bringing Porsche to its first win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1970—followed by another win the next year. The 917 was made especially famous by being the star car in Steve McQueen's 1971 film Le Mans, and that car sold for a record price two years ago. To celebrate the 917's birthday, Porsche is opening a special exhibit at the Porsche Museum that will run from May 14 to September 15, with 10 different models to be displayed. Most interestingly to us, Porsche also has revealed the stunning car you see here: the company calls it the 917 Living Legend concept, and it has never been seen until now.

Porsche says the concept was developed in just six months by "a small team of designers and engineers" in 2013 and will remain just a study. It's quite obviously a painted clay model—the finish, blacked-out windows, and many of the details give that away—but it's a full-scale car and uses wheels that were nabbed from a 918 Spyder. The red-and-white "Salzburg" livery is taken directly from the 917 that won Le Mans in 1970 (pictured at the bottom of the story), as is the racing number 23.

Comparing it to the '70s race car, we see a surprising number of similarities, such as the wedgelike nose and low hood, huge front fenders, and short rear overhang. The wraparound windshield is like that of the racer, as is the way the body rises up towards the rear haunches after the front fenders end. Some elements are reminiscent of the 918 Spyder, like the rectangular headlights and design of the side skirt and front air intakes—but it's easy to draw parallels to the 917 with those details, too. The rear is radical, with the roofline dropping down to the very low exhaust tips at the top of the diffuser, while the tall rear fenders flow into a huge rear spoiler. The new photos also reveal details like vented front fenders, slim taillights integrated into the spoiler, and a glass (or what would be glass) engine cover.

We think the new 917 looks quite stunning, so it's a shame that, unlike its inspiration and namesake, it will never race around a track. Porsche says that its entrance in the LMP1 class of the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2014 prevented its racing designers and engineers from doing any further work on the car, so the model was put into storage until now. We will hopefully see even more of the 917 concept when the Porsche Museum's exhibit opens to the public later this year.

This story was originally published on March 11, 2019.

Daniel Golson has been an avid car enthusiast since he was a toddler, and after spending a few years studying automotive design in college, he made the jump to Car and Driver in 2016. When not evangelizing about four-door coupes, he can be found watching The Real Housewives with his two cats.

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