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Porsche's Skunkworks Built the Taycan Turbo GT

Only a handful at Porsche knew about this car’s development. We learned what makes it remarkable.

Porsche Taycan Turbo GT

Chris Perkins

By: Chris Perkins

Apr 10, 2024 at 8:30am ET

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A few years ago, Stefan Weckbach, then the chief engineer for the Porsche Taycan, built a weird prototype.

"He came up to me with this normal-looking Taycan with two bucket seats and more power,” Porsche test driver Lars Kern told Motor1 at the car’s Spain launch. "He was like ‘Can you drive it?’ I was looking at the tires and they were Pirelli Corsas from the Panamera. I was like ‘Okay, seems good,’ And we just drove around in Weissach. There wasn’t even a number plate on it and the thing was flying.”

Kern approved. Weckbach’s successor, Kevin Giek, revived it some time later. The brief was essentially to build the ultimate EV, and no idea was too silly. It was to be a real skunkworks effort. The development team was small, and they answered only to Giek and Porsche’s board—no middle-management, no complex approvals process, almost unprecedented freedom to build.

The Turbo GT features a number of tweaks compared to the Taycan Turbo S. A new silicon-carbide inverter for the rear motor boosts total output to 1,092 horsepower when using launch control (1,019 hp with Attack Mode enabled, and 777 hp at all other times). The engineers saved a bit of weight by ditching luxuries like a power-opening charge door and soft-close passenger doors.

2025 Porsche Taycan GT First Drive

In the case of the Weissach-Package car, Porsche axed back seats entirely. Both the standard and Weissach Package car get a unique aero treatment, with the latter gaining a fixed rear wing. There’s unique 21-inch forged wheels, and the standard tires are Pirelli’s new P-Zero R, while the ultra-grippy Trofeo RS is optional. Also standard is Porsche Active Ride, the automaker’s brilliant active-suspension system, which all but eliminates pitch, roll, and dive (the system doesn’t compensate for tire deflection).

Extreme measures like the rear-seat delete or the addition of bespoke Trofeo RS tires wouldn’t happen if the Turbo GT was developed like a normal Porsche model.

“It’s a little bit crazy,” says Christian Müller, the Turbo GT’s chief engineer. “At the beginning, we were talking about ‘Okay, let’s take out this, and this, and this, and this. But it felt good to go in a radical way….you have to go one step further than the others.”

2025 Porsche Taycan GT First Drive

“It was all the little ideas and little tweaks which made the cars so special,” Kern tells us. “I mean everybody was allowed to bring up an idea and it all went through Christian to Kevin, and he was like ‘Yeah. Whatever makes this faster, we’ve got to fuckin’ do it.’”

Müller says that the Turbo GT isn’t simply a response to Tesla showing up at the Nürburgring—a Model S Plaid with the optional Track Package ran a 7:25.231 in 2023, besting the Taycan Turbo S’s 7:33.35 in 2021. But Müller conceded the Nordschleife is like Porsche’s “living room.” The company takes Nürburgring lap times very seriously, so surely it wanted to take the crown from Tesla. And indeed, with Kern’s 7:07.55, the Turbo GT is not only the fastest electric sedan at the Nürburgring, but the fastest sedan period. It’s just two-ish seconds slower than the fastest EV to ever lap the track, the Rimac Nevera hypercar.

Gallery: 2025 Porsche Taycan Turbo GT First Drive

2025 Porsche Taycan GT First Drive

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What’s perhaps most remarkable is that for all its speed, the Turbo GT is approachable and friendly. Fun, even. In other words, not just a lap-time machine.

“It’s not just one thing… we always try to get a good package that makes the car fast and rounded,” Kern said. “You’re not buying the battery or the suspension,” he added. “You’re buying the whole car. You don’t care how we did it, you just want it to be done as well as possible.”

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