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World’s Only Bulletproof Porsche 911 Is a Very Normal-Looking 996 Carrera

Armored Porsches do exist, but of the lot, only one of them is factory-made this way. This is that one time when Porsche wanted to see if a bulletproof Porsche 911 would… fly.
The only 911 Porsche made bulletproof is this unassuming Carrera 996 9 photos
Photo: YouTube/That Nine Eleven Guy
The only 911 Porsche made bulletproof is this unassuming Carrera 996The only 911 Porsche made bulletproof is this unassuming Carrera 996The only 911 Porsche made bulletproof is this unassuming Carrera 996The only 911 Porsche made bulletproof is this unassuming Carrera 996The only 911 Porsche made bulletproof is this unassuming Carrera 996The only 911 Porsche made bulletproof is this unassuming Carrera 996The only 911 Porsche made bulletproof is this unassuming Carrera 996The only 911 Porsche made bulletproof is this unassuming Carrera 996
It did not.

When you think of armored cars, a bright turquoise Porsche is probably not the first one that pops into mind, but it could very well be that the carmaker was going for the whole hiding in plain sight strategy. YouTube That Nine Eleven Guy recently visited the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, and he delivers a walk-around of the world’s only factory-armored 911.

You can see the video in full at the bottom of the page.

During the late ‘90s, Mercedes “across the road” was making a lot of armored cars. According to That Nine Eleven Guy, the legend goes that, when a customer came asking Porsche for one such vehicle, the big bosses decided to see if it could be done. They imagined that, if one came asking for an armored Porsche, there might be actual demand for a factory-built vehicle of this kind.

They took an early 1997 Carrera 996 off the production line and set to work. Painted in Dragonfly Turquoise Metallic, this 911 looks just like any other from that time – unless, of course, you know where to look for a tell-tale sign. That would be the two-inch (5-cm) black border on the margins of the windows as the glass throughout was replaced with 20-millimeter-thick double-glazed Sekurit glass that Porsche says can withstand shots from a 9 mm handgun and a .44 Magnum revolver.

The body is armored, too, but on considerations of extra weight, instead of steel plating, Porsche used energy-absorbing composite Dyneema to keep bullets from entering the passenger cabin. The car is still incredibly heavy: at 3 tons (6,000 pounds or 2,721 kg), it’s twice as heavy as the stock model. It’s powered by the same 3.4-liter flat-six engine making 296 hp and 258 lb-ft (350 Nm) of torque, which means that while it will protect you from gunfire, don’t count on it getting you out of a sticky situation too fast.

The armored body and glass make the cabin exceptionally silent. That said, the highlight of this one-off build is that, with the exception of the black strip on the glass, it was factory-built bulletproof without any giveaway for it.

Eventually, Porsche decided that making armored 911s was too expensive for the kind of demand they were seeing. This one-off exercise was stored at the Museum, where it’s being kept in impeccable condition.

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About the author: Elena Gorgan
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Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends.
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