The Porsche with Prost's power

Knowing that the engine screaming away behind you powered then-double world champion Alain Prost to third place in the Hungarian Grand Prix and the fastest lap at Suzuka during the 1987 Formula 1 season with McLaren would never, ever get old. 

It was the swansong for one of the more successful engines in Grand Prix racing, and the turbocharged Hans Mezger-designed 1.5-litre had been developed from the start of the decade by Porsche for a demanding McLaren boss Ron Dennis, and rebranded at huge cost to Mansour Ojjeh’s TAG. Bolted into the tail of Porsche 930 it commands a premium today, too, at more than £2m.

But this, obviously, is no ordinary 930. It is one of 11 TAG Turbos built and overhauled by Dean Lanzante. The stripped and blasted chassis is cloaked in carbon-fibre and aluminium rather than steel, saving around 60kg, and swapping from flat-six to V6 saves twice that. 

Working closely with Cosworth, Lanzante has uprated various engine components and included the former’s ECU, while carbon-ceramic brakes boost stopping power. And shed yet more weight: 15kg. The gold 17inch wheels have come from a RUF 911, the fronts an inch narrower than the 10inch rears, and the five-speed gearbox is a more modern (relatively: it's from a 993) six-speed to cope better with the power.

There are also luxuries within, including a Porsche Classic media unit and ludicrously well finished seats, but you’d struggle to find better noise than what is being produced by the highly strung, 1.5-litre powerplant in the back. 

It got there thanks to some persistence from Lanzante and a shared history between him and McLaren that resulted in victory at Le Mans in 1995. Dean and his father Paul’s eponymous race team ran the plain-liveried F1 GTR that shocked the sports car world with a JJ Lehto-inspired win. It was McLaren’s own development car, which with backing from Kokusai Kaihatsu UK was lent to Lanzante to run in the race. The fraught win was never expected.

Lanzante has since been a key figure with McLarens, including converting a track-only P1 GTR to be road legal, and he’d supposedly been chasing this idea of putting a Porsche V6 F1 engine into a 930 for years because the factory did one in period and never let it out of its clutches. It’s rarely, if ever, been seen. 

The old engines were clearly rather easier to get hold of, but the TAG Turbos weren’t exactly flying around on the open market. But this, via Broad Arrow Private Sales, is giving one lucky buyer the chance to experience F1 power in a blistering Porsche 911. 

Broad Arrow happens to have a matching mintgrün RUF CTR consigned for sale, and despatched Henry Catchpole to Anglesey to compare the two.