This big red Porsche named “Lucy” is maybe one of my favorite racing cars of recent motorsport history, because it was built with a single-minded focus to go really fast at Pikes Peak, and that’s pretty much it. BBi Autosport in Southern California built this car for French rally driver Raphael Astier to run at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in 2019, and after some serious modifications he ran it again in 2021. This car started life as a 911 GT America race car entered in IMSA competition in 2015 before it was converted to this wild BBi-engineered twice-Pikes Peak class-winning spec. If you have a spare $249,000 kicking around in your bank account, I recommend you buy it, just to feel something.
The car and driver combo were fast enough in 2019 for second overall, just 11 seconds slower than Robin Schute’s winning Wolf-Honda Prototype, and if it weren’t for a boost-related issue, it might have won overall. The car’s teething issues from 2019 were fixed for the 2021 effort, but ultimately the poor weather and sleet-shortened course meant the car didn’t have a chance to repeat its monster inaugural effort, settling for fifth overall, but still winning the Open class.
Above is video of the car’s 2019 run, and according to BBi founder Betim Berisha, the car sucked up a piece of its intake hose into the right side turbocharger on this run, causing a significant lack of boost in the upper half of the mountain. You know, at altitude, where boost is important. For 2021 the car was significantly widened to fit bigger tires and rear quarters from a 911 Turbo were grafted on to feed air to the engine. BBi worked with JRZ to develop a GPS-controlled damper adjustment map so the car would adjust to each corner of the mountain individually. And finally the car was giving a ton more aero with a bigger rear wing, deeper diffuser, and a more aggressive front splitter.
This car, in its 2021 spec, looks absolutely the business. Every inch of this car has been fretted over by a shop turning out meticulous work. I’ve spent a lot of time in a lot of paddocks, and seen a lot of race cars. Race cars aren’t meant to look this good.
I can guarantee that the team put a lot more than a quarter million into this car, and you absolutely couldn’t build this wild machine for less. If you wanted to learn how to dominate your regional time attack series, this wouldn’t be a terrible place to start. You should buy it, because if I leverage everything I own and end up in this machine, it would probably be the death of me. It might be the death of you, too, but debt collectors can’t track you down in the afterlife, so that might be a benefit.
