Porsche Carrera GT
The Carrera GT is the original Porsche supercar, boasting a mid-engined 5.7ltr naturally aspirated V10 originally intended for use in Formula 1 dating back to 1992. That idea was shelved, and it later became a project to race it at the LeMans 24hr during the late 90’s. None of these ideas ever came to fruition due to rule changes within the respective race formulas, and Porsche’s funding of their motorsport division being pulled back to inject cashflow into developing the Cayenne at the time. This eventually led Porsche to put this marvel of an engine in a road going supercar in 2004; the Porsche Carrera GT was born. With a run of just 1270 cars worldwide, and only 49 here in the UK, the Carrera GT in recent years has become somewhat a collector’s item, with prices today soaring to as much as £1.5m and rising!
We are privileged to have worked on three of these cars, one of which we maintain on a regular basis. The subject of this article was a new acquisition to a long-standing client of ours who has had a hankering for one for a while. After narrowing down his existing collection of cars, he took the plunge and as he put it, bought himself “a big Boxster”. Wanting to get out and drive the car on a regular basis required something special by way of protecting the paintwork, so enjoyment can be fulfilled without the worry of devaluing the car owed to damaged paintwork from stone chips and such that are often picked up on spirited drives.
Our first challenge was that these cars were produced between 2004-2006, which was also about the time when Paint Protection Film (PPF) was in its early stages of development and not used widespread like it is today, so we had no meaningful pattern available within our database, other than a front bumper. To overcome this, we spoke to our friends and collaborators at SunTek Films, who very kindly dispatched a pattern engineer who would 3D map the car over a couple of days so that they could begin designing a pattern for us from scratch.
Once the 3D mapping was completed by the engineer, this CAD file was sent back to SunTek Films in the USA to be converted into a flat file wire diagram, so that it was compatible with our Graphtec plotter. With the file uploaded into our pattern database a couple of days later (totalling 4 days from 3D scan to being able to plot film is an exceptionally quick turnaround), we were able to start making the amendments we desired to get the optimum fit and also protection. Usually, a new pattern template is around 95% accurate, getting it to 100% comes from test fitting and tweaking here or there where necessary. We amended a few areas to add better coverage, and a few more wrapped edges than the ‘kit standard’.
Once we were happy with the design, we began the install process.
The PPF we chose for this install was SunTek Reaction, which is SunTek’s top specification film. It offers the benefits of self-healing PPF and ceramic coatings, in one product! The film is incredibly slick to the touch, and the water repellence is akin to the best ceramic coatings on the market. It was the ideal choice for such a fantastic car!
It was a real honour to be tasked with protecting a vehicle of such value and prestige. The Carrera GT is arguably the most fawned over Porsche out there, and that V10 engine sounds so sweet! Being from the mid noughties, this is probably the last ‘analogue’ supercar made, technology and electronics took over shortly after… even Porsche’s attempt at a successor brought about the 918 Spyder, a hybrid hypercar.
While working on a car such as this, with the challenges it presented by having no existing pattern, it really does help in being a factory approved installation centre - without SunTek’s backing, it would have been a struggle making our own template and/or bulking sections of the car which would’ve required some knifework. As it was, our install was of the highest standard and had the least amount of risk possible thanks to the use of a pattern that we were able to pre-cut by machine.
Thanks for reading, and in case you were wondering if the car was driven back home once we’d finished, I can confirm it definitely was!!