At the ongoing E3 gaming expo in Los Angeles, Microsoft held their own event to detail all the announcements they had planned to make around their gaming efforts, specifically concerning Xbox.
There, they unveiled the new Xbox One X flagship console and, along side that, showed off the latest game in the Forza Motorsport series, Forza Motorsport 7, launching in early October. As the previous game back in 2015 established with the co-unveil of the 2017 Ford GT, the sequel title also took the opportunity to pull the covers off a hotly anticipated and very fast car, swiping the thunder of more established unveil venues such as the annual Geneva or Paris/Frankfurt Motor Show.
Of course, we’re talking about the Porsche 911 GT2 RS, which will be the game’s cover car. But despite seeing it in the flesh on stage as well as watch the car race in-game, the press weren’t allowed to poke it up close nor were they briefed on even its basic specifications.
That doesn’t answer many questions we have surrounding the car’s internals and performance, but it does satisfy that curiosity about how it’ll look. To our eyes, it’s pretty much exactly as we imagined it to be. Lots of aero and a black (exposed carbon fibre?) on dark grey exterior colour scheme that matches the 997-based GT2 RS.
Based on earlier reports, the 2018 model (based on the Type-991 Porsche 911) uses a same combination of powerful engine from the Turbo S as well as a lightweight body and rear-wheel drive layout from the track-focused GT3 RS. Only here, the 3.8-litre twin-turbocharged flat-six has been fettled to generate over 477kW, though our guess/hope is that it could even touch 522kW.
At the E3 event, Dan Greenawalt, Creative Director of Turn 10 Studios at Microsoft, didn’t tell the audience much about the car as they were left to drink in its aggressive exterior. He did say, though, that it is “features the most powerful road going 911 engine ever made”. But we already knew that would be the case.
Perhaps Porsche is still waiting to finalise the car’s production specification or it could be that they’re intentionally waiting for the next major motor show to stage a full debut. Fittingly, the automotive calendar says that German city of Frankfurt will play host to it in September.
The appearance of a major new car by Porsche in conjunction with the next Forza game is no accident, back in April the automaker and Microsoft announced that they have entered into an exclusive six-year partnership to bring Porsche cars into the digital sphere, working closely to expose a new audience to both their road going and racing models.
