911 Carrera

Make
Porsche
Segment
Coupe

In the past half-century, over a million Porsche 911s have been built. And as cherished (and well-built) as they are, most of them, you can bet, are still on the road. But some of our favorites among them, hard as it may be to narrow down, are those that were built to rally - from the factory original 911 Safari to the latest projects from the likes of RUF and Gemballa.

That includes the exceedingly rare Heigo-Porsche, of which only four were ever made. And all four of them were recently reunited for the first time, some 40 years after the first one was made.

Known mainly by a handful of Porschephiles, the Heigo-Porsche was the brainchild of one Dieter Roscheisen. The young factory technician built this machine to rally with a handful of friends and the patronage of Heigo Autotechnik, but starved for cash, he ended up selling his sole example through a deal orchestrated by none other than the legendary rally driver Walter Rohrl. And so, Roscheisen thought, it had disappeared into the dustbin of history until his phone rang almost 30 years later. Steve Davies, the British enthusiast on the other end, had discovered the car and set about bringing it back to its former glory.

Shortly after being reunited with his long-lost passion project, Roscheisen, his friend Rafael Diez, and Walter Rohrl built a replica of the original. And then they built two more for a pair of telecom executives in Frankfurt. It wasn't until the four were brought together, though, that their respective owners and the men behind the project realized just how faithfully each detail had been reproduced.

"We did a lot of development work and experimented with springs and dampers," said Rohrl. "We were able to compare the cars with current rally cars at the Lower Bavaria Rally. From this, we concluded that our Heigo-Porsche models were perfect."