Thornley Kelham’s European RS is a $750,000 911 Restomod

I know, I know, it’s another 911. But you’ve read this far, so you obviously think Thornley Kelham’s retro Porsche deserves further inspection, and we agree. Maybe, like us, you remember the gorgeous Desperado-style Lancia Aurelia CSL these guys pulled off back in 2021, or maybe it’s because the RSR-style front end (with shades of the 993 GT2) makes TK’s European RS look a little different than some other modified 911s.

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There are plenty more, of course, including cars made by Singer, a company everyone in the field should be grateful to. But unlike the Californian company, which based its 964-generation 911 on the early 1990s, Britain’s Thornley Kelham based its 911 on that car’s predecessor.

Related: Thornley Kelham previews a series of high-performance “re-interpretations” of classics

Going the 964 route gets you things like anti-lock brakes and power steering, but Thornley Kelham says the older 911 donor was chosen because it’s lighter, and the company also offers electric power steering if the owner doesn’t feel like wrestling with those fat front tires through a quick-ratio, 2.5-turn, manual rack.

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The body was then stretched by the manufacturer to cover a track that was widened by 112 mm (4.4 in) at the front and 214 mm (8.4 in) at the rear, with the doors and front bonnet clad in aluminium, and carbon fibre bumpers and a carbon fibre ducktail rear spoiler added, culminating in a fully finished body shell that took 2,500 hours of meticulous work.

On the other side of the polycarbonate rear and quarter windows you’ll find one-piece carbon fiber Recaro bucket seats, a Momo Prototipo steering wheel, a lightweight climate control system, and a set of gauges that look identical to Porsche’s originals but have been redesigned to work with the new electrical system.

Starting at around $750,000, you get a hand-built 993-era flat-six engine with up to 3.8 liters of displacement, billet cylinder heads, forged Mahle pistons (11.8:1 compression), special cams, and individual throttle bodies. The engine revs to 8,000 rpm and produces 385 hp (390 PS) and 290 lb-ft (393 Nm), but spending money on the engine brings more options.

A torquey, 24-valve, 4.0-liter engine with 400 horsepower (406 PS), or you can go the other way and opt for a 3.8-liter engine that revs to 10,000 rpm. All engines drive the rear wheels through a six-speed manual transmission with a custom repositioned shifter and a Wavetrac LSD.

Other options include an adaptive damping system for the suspension setup, which uses bespoke front wishbones said to be based on the lower arms of a modern 911 GT3, and comes standard with JRZ four-way coilovers, Eibach springs and adjustable anti-roll bars. If you plan on driving on the track, you can also specify carbon ceramic brakes and Michelin Cup 2 rubber.

Only 25 examples of the European RS 911 have been built by Thornley Kelham, before the car moves into a less conspicuous segment, closer to the company’s Lancia Aurelia, the first car in the European series. The 911 is the second project, and later this year we’ll see the third and fourth cars, a modified Porsche 356 (European SL) and a Jaguar XK (European GT).

So why did Thornley Kelham decide to build a batch of modified 911s when the Aurelia and XK showed they were capable of being more original? It’s been done many times before. The idea came from a commission from an architect who had previously bought an Aston Martin DB4 from the company and came back asking him to build him the best 911 in the world.

He also owns a 997 GT3 RS 4.0 and wanted an older Porsche with RS styling. The car took four years from conception to completion, but now other millionaires can quickly own a similar car by learning along the way and gaining similar experience.

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