Porsche Built a One-Off 911 GT2 RS Flachbau RS to Honor the Legendary Moby Dick

Porsche just pulled the covers off the most ambitious one-off it has ever commissioned through its Sonderwunsch program. Debuting at Monterey Car Week 2026, the 911 GT2 RS Flachbau RS is a road-legal tribute to the legendary 935/78 – the Porsche Le Mans racer the press christened “Moby Dick.” Three years of work. One customer. Zero compromises.

The Legend Behind the Name

The 935/78 earned its “Moby Dick” nickname from journalists who spotted the elongated white body and towering whale tail at its 1978 debut. The car won four consecutive World Championships for Makes and took class and overall victories at Le Mans, Daytona, and Sebring. Porsche then offered the original Flachbau — the slantnose body with redesigned front fenders and pop-up headlights — on the Type 930 911 Turbo between 1982 and 1989, with just 948 examples produced. Even counting later third-party conversions, Flachbau 911s remain among the rarest and most coveted variants in the entire lineage.

The new Flachbau RS traces that exact lineage. When Porsche registered “Flachbau” and “Flachbau RS” as model designations with the European Patent Office in May 2025, the sports car world immediately started theorizing. Now the answer is public — and it is every bit as extraordinary as anyone hoped.

What Sonderwunsch Actually Built

Start with a pristine 2018 Type 991.2 911 GT2 RS with the Weissach Package. Hand it to a team of Sonderwunsch specialists, Style Porsche designers, Weissach development engineers, and Manthey Racing technicians. Work for nearly three years. The powertrain — the GT2 RS’s 700-horsepower twin-turbo flat-six — remains untouched per the customer’s request. Everything else changed. Grant Larson — the same designer who created the 2018 modern 935 revival — designed the Flachbau RS, bringing direct lineage continuity to the project.

The front fenders are now lower and flatter, with slatted louvers that vent the wheel arches and cut internal air pressure. The standard round headlights are replaced by a stacked three-tier LED system, with the low and high beams each measuring less than 1.5 inches tall and the daytime running lights even slimmer at under 0.78 inches. The paint is Grand Prix White — a Porsche tradition since 1974 — with a U-shaped carbon fiber contrast element at the front that directly echoes the Martini-liveried 935/78. Carbon aero discs on the rear wheels reduce drag. Deep black brake calipers complete the exterior.

The Aero Engineering Is Not a Styling Exercise

Porsche ran the Flachbau RS through full Computational Fluid Dynamics aerodynamic analysis, simplified crash simulations, airbag deployment validation, and hydropulse vibration rigs before approving any tooling. Three prototype vehicles were built for testing in lighting and wind tunnels and for real-world runs at the Mendig airfield and Weissach. Porsche test driver Lars Kern completed 50 laps of the Nürburgring-Nordschleife in the car alone. In High Downforce mode, the new S-mount rear wing — inspired by the 911 GT3 R rennsport but nearly two inches taller — generates 1,221 lbs of downforce on the rear axle at 211 mph, besting a standard GT2 RS with Manthey Kit by two to three percent in both wing positions.

“On the Nordschleife, it becomes immediately clear how cleanly the aerodynamic concept works,” Kern said. “The Flachbau RS remains extremely stable and precise even at very high speeds. This is exactly the kind of feedback needed to validate such a radically altered body design.” The wing adjusts manually into three positions, with settings and position markings protected by separate patent filings.

Inside, Less Is Dramatically More

The GT2 RS started life with red Alcantara, black leather, and exposed carbon fiber throughout. Forward of the seats, most of that survived. Behind the seats, almost nothing did. Porsche removed the PCM infotainment system, the full audio setup, all sound-deadening material, and the floor coverings — then finished the exposed bare metal in Grand Prix White, exactly as a factory race car would be presented. Wiring harnesses run deliberately exposed, protected only by lightweight sheathing. Redundant individual wires were physically removed from the harness.

The carbon-fiber bucket seats carry “Flachbau RS” headrest embroidery with a stylized Nordschleife outline behind the lettering. A gold-colored Sonderwunsch badge on the passenger dashboard reads “Werksunikat 2026 — Flachbau RS” — Factory One-Off in German. The standard mounting points for the warning triangle and tow hook were deleted; those legally required items now live in a removable box that can be pulled out before track sessions. The total weight saved across all of these measures: 70 lbs from a car that Porsche had already pushed to its engineering limits at the factory.

Your turn: One car, one customer, three years of Porsche’s best engineers working alongside Manthey Racing. Would you strip out the stereo, PCM, and floor mats to save 70 lbs from a GT2 RS — or does the Flachbau slantnose look justify the Sonderwunsch commission on its own? Drop your take in the comments.