From late 1983 to the end of the 1987 Formula 1 season, the Marlboro McLaren Formula 1 team ran TAG engines. Built by Porsche, these were 1.5-litre V6 units that were rather uncouth most of the time and flat-out monstrous at others.
To mark the occasion, the Zuffenhausen automaker chose to experiment by shoving the race-spec engine into the rear of their 911 Turbo at the time. A proper road car with a legitimate Formula 1 motor driving its wheels, undiluted. Actually, the likelihood that it will even be allowed to be legally driven down a road is slim.
That one-off 930 Turbo prototype, unsurprisingly, would be forever enshrined as an automotive aberration of the highest order, spending the since in pristine condition, cared for by the experts at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, England.
Enter Lanzante - a company that’s plenty strange and secretive but also incredibly fascinating. The these UK tuners and restoration specialists have had their hand in a number of legitimately legendary automotive endeavours as well as been actively and consistently successful in racing.
Their involvement with McLaren, in particular, has been especially noteworthy as they were solely trusted with producing a road going version of the race-spec F1 GTR, a car their team took to victory at the Le Mans in 1995.
This relationship, decades later, would lead to them again being tapped by the Woking-based automaker again to perform a similar conversion for their P1 GTR into the P1 LM, the most extreme road-legal version of the McLaren P1 hybrid hypercar. Only 5 examples will ever exist.
Now, though, they are embarking on what is arguably an even more insane project. See, in the 1980s, which some might say was the sports’ heyday, when turbocharged engines were allowed to compete against larger naturally aspirated units, McLaren team boss Ron Dennis negotiated a deal to have Porsche develop and build a 1.5-litre turbocharged V6 for the MP4/1E, but funded and branded under the TAG (Techniques d'Avant Garde) name to replace their previously used Cosworth V8s.
Unsurprisingly, these early turbocharged engines were immensely powerful and often times frightening for even seasoned F1 drivers to harness perfectly. They also suffered from reliability issues due to the very high amounts of boost they would suddenly produce, offloading its 750hp output at unexpected times.
At the Rennsport Reunion last weekend at the Laguna Seca Raceway, Lanzante announced that it would build 11 more examples of these Formula 1-powered 911s, featuring the genuine 1.5-litre turbo-V6 that raced in the 1980s hanging from its rear overhang.
Lanzante has McLaren’s official blessing, of course, as they would otherwise have no way to source these race original engines, but its unclear at this point that either party would deem these cars-to-be as safe to be driven by mere mortals, so it’s likely they would need to be detuned considerably, if only to have them last. We salute you, Lanzante. You crazy freaks.
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