Porsche Built a One-Off 911 S/T Inspired by a Privateer Racer From 1972

Porsche’s Sonderwunsch program exists for a specific type of customer: someone who has the means to buy any 911 in the current lineup and wants something that nobody else on earth can buy. The program takes a production car and transforms it through bespoke design, materials, and finishing into a one-of-one commission that reflects the owner’s personal connection to Porsche’s history, racing heritage, or design language.

The latest Sonderwunsch commission is a one-off 911 S/T inspired by a 1972 Phoenix Red example that raced 27 times across North American circuits between 1973 and 1978. The result is a car that connects seven decades of Porsche engineering to a single Canadian privateer team’s racing story.

The Original Car

The source material is a 1972 Porsche 911 S/T owned and raced by Equipe de Course Marc Dancose, a Canadian privateer team. Brumos Racing, the legendary Jacksonville, Florida-based Porsche racing operation, prepared the car for competition. It left the factory in Signal Yellow before being repainted in Phoenix Red for its racing career.

The car competed at Sebring, Daytona, Indianapolis, and Lime Rock, accumulating 27 race entries between 1973 and 1978. Its career ended after a crash at Trois-Rivieres, Quebec. The car was later restored and now resides in a Swiss collection alongside the new Sonderwunsch commission. The owner of both cars is the person who commissioned the one-off, which means the modern 911 S/T lives in the same space as the 1972 car that inspired it.

The Modern Reinterpretation

Grant Larson designed the Sonderwunsch car. Larson is not a junior designer given a side project. He’s the same person who penned the Carrera GT and the original Boxster, two of the most consequential Porsche designs of the modern era. His involvement signals how seriously Porsche treats these commissions.

The base car is the current 911 S/T: a 4.0-liter naturally aspirated flat-six producing 518 horsepower and 343 lb-ft of torque, mated to a six-speed manual transmission driving the rear wheels. The standard 911 S/T starts at $291,650 before any Sonderwunsch work. The final price of this commission is undisclosed but described as “north of that,” which in Sonderwunsch terms could mean anything from $400,000 to well over $1 million depending on the scope of the customization.

The Exterior

The paint is the most immediately striking element. Phoenix Red and Signal Yellow are hand-applied across the bodywork in a gradient that references the original car’s color history. The 1972 car started life in Signal Yellow and was repainted Phoenix Red for racing. The Sonderwunsch car wears both colors simultaneously, collapsing two eras of the original car’s life into a single visual statement.

The wheels run an asymmetric setup that mirrors the original privateer configuration. Stock wheels on the front axle. Removable Manthey Racing aerodiscs on the rear, derived from the GT3 RS program. The aerodiscs are not street-legal in most jurisdictions, but they’re fully track-capable, and their presence on a one-off road car is the kind of engineering indulgence that Sonderwunsch exists to enable. The asymmetry is deliberate and historically referenced. It looks purposeful because it is.

The Interior

The cabin is where the privateer racing story becomes most personal. The Camel GT Challenge dromedary logo (from the original car’s racing livery) appears embroidered in the headrests, embossed on the center console lid, and etched into the door sill trim. Circuit outlines from Sebring, Daytona, Indianapolis, and Lime Rock are woven into the interior materials, mapping the four tracks where the original car competed most frequently.

Door-mounted puddle lamps project the Camel logo onto the ground when the doors open. The effect is theatrical in a way that most modern car lighting tricks are not, because the logo has specific meaning to the specific person who commissioned the car. It’s not a brand exercise. It’s a personal reference made visible.

What Sonderwunsch Means for Porsche

Porsche describes the program as creating “reinterpretations rather than replicas.” The distinction is important. A replica attempts to recreate a historical car exactly as it was. A reinterpretation uses a historical car as a starting point for a modern expression that incorporates contemporary engineering, materials, and design language. The Sonderwunsch 911 S/T doesn’t pretend to be the 1972 car. It exists because the 1972 car inspired someone deeply enough to commission a modern echo of it using the best hardware Porsche currently produces.

The program is invite-only and requires a relationship with Porsche that goes beyond simply being able to write a check. Porsche selects Sonderwunsch candidates based on their history with the brand, their vision for the commission, and the story they want to tell through the car. The result is a vehicle that functions as both a performance machine and a narrative object. The car tells a story every time someone asks about it, and the story connects to a specific car, a specific team, and a specific set of circuits in a way that a standard 911, no matter how well optioned, never could.

This particular Sonderwunsch 911 S/T now lives in Switzerland alongside the restored 1972 car that inspired it. Two 911 S/Ts, separated by fifty years, sharing the same space. One raced. One remembers.