300 hours. That is how long it took just to paint a single car. Porsche Cars Australia has revealed the 911 Turbo S Land Down Under, a one-off created for the 75th anniversary of the brand on the continent. Behind it stand the Sonderwunsch workshop, the Style Porsche team and Sydney-based artist Werner Bronkhorst.
Two Chromaflair colours were developed for this car alone — Terra Australis Red and Southern Cross Blue. The first covers the lower body, the second takes over from the shoulderline, and the transition between them is seamless. For a Porsche in Australia, paints like these were mixed for the very first time. The trick sits in the pigment: ultra-thin flakes with a reflective aluminium core are wrapped in a transparent, glass-like shell, and the thickness of that shell decides which colour your eye actually sees. Seven layers went on by hand — hence the 300 hours. Depending on the light the body runs through desert orange, dusk blue, eucalyptus green and sunrise gold. The 20/21-inch Turbo Exclusive wheels wear the same Southern Cross Blue.
The number 75 is hidden in the roof. It is brought out by a “ghosting effect” — a painting technique Porsche had never used before, set in a typeface Bronkhorst drew himself. And it points at two anniversaries at once: 75 years of Porsche in Australia and 75 years of Porsche Motorsport. A second message lives under the deployable rear wing — “See ya later mate”. Only the people already left behind get to read it, because it appears in Sport Plus mode or when the wing raises itself above 80 km/h (50 mph).
The cabin is a story of its own. Coolibah Brown leather, a colour invented specifically for this project, sits next to Dark Night Blue and contrasting Kalahari. The centre panels of the 18-way adaptive sports seats are built from 14,417 perforations arranged into the pattern of a brushstroke, and the headrests carry an embossed motif marking 75 years of the brand in Australia. The dashboard and the rear seat inlays are hand-finished Australian silky oak. Topographic contour lines of the Blue Mountains run across the upper dashboard and the side trims, while the roof lining holds an embroidered map of the night sky over Uluru exactly as it looked in 1951, the year the first Porsche arrived in Australia.
The hardware was left alone. The hybrid powertrain built around the 3.6-litre flat-six delivers 711 hp and 800 Nm, and top speed stands at 322 km/h (200 mph). Porsche has done an anniversary 911 Turbo S before, too — the Sadu Edition was dedicated to the culture of Kuwait. After the premiere the car sets off for selected locations around the country, although Porsche has not published the route. Nor has it named a future owner: the commission came from the brand’s own national arm rather than from a private customer, which is how Sonderwunsch projects normally begin.
