14/09/2023
To celebrate our 20th birthday, we've trawled through our archives and are bringing a few infamous cars we’ve developed that you all may know back to light...
The Lighting Direct 964 Turbo S Le Mans GT:
This particular 964 Turbo S Le Mans GT, built by Manfield Freisinger in Germany was imported by Bill Fulford from France to continue racing in NZ after a very successful career throughout Europe and Asia. In some notable races from the 1994 and 1995 BPR Global Endurance GT Championship it came 2nd in the 1994 Suzuka 1000km, 2nd in the Paul Ricard 4-hour, 6th in the Nürburgring 4-hour and 4th in the Monza 4-hour.
The car was raced in New Zealand Super GT series to much success, and was brought to us as one of the first race cars to be developed under the Motorscience name in 2003. The car was developed intensively with aero elements from the 993 and was now putting out a reliable 900hp+ from the same base 3.6L twin-turbo flat fan engine. The car had come a long way from what had been imported years earlier, and won the Super GT series twice under this guise. Following an accident at a race at Pukekohe in 2006 the car sat at the back of the workshop as Bill used Dean’s car to continue racing in the Super GT series for the next couple of years.
While the car had some well-deserved rest at the back of the Motorscience workshop, plans for a rebuild were underway, and the path of restoring it back to the original 964 Turbo S LM-GT of the mid 90’s was decided upon. With help from both Greg at Profile Auto Body, who had the original panels for the car, and Owen Evans who carried out the chassis repair on the front of the car and the repainting back to its original 90’s scheme. This decision to revert to the 964 body came with its own set of challenges to re-design the cooling system, changing the system developed for the 993 and re-working it into the original 964 aero kit.
Bill had been vocal in making sure it was not just restored as a show car, but it needed to be damned fast, faster than it had been before the crash! With this in mind we applied lessons learnt from the development of Dean’s Lighting Direct car to the total redesign of this car. A total engine rebuild was carried out with new barrels and pistons, custom heads were designed and made, and importantly the throttle was changed from cable to electric which made the car a lot more drivable out of corners. This extensive development resulted in an engine putting out 750hp at 1.0 bar of boost to 900hp at 1.4 bar boost. Alongside this we redesigned the suspension and brakes from the ground up, again drawing on what we had developed in on other successful race cars during the years Bill’s car was awaiting restoration.
The car was off the dyno on Wednesday, and at the track on Friday. The cars last outing in NZ was the Porsche Parade at Hampton Downs in 2016 where it was doing track runs with Greg Murphy, Paul Radisich and Kenny Smith driving the car alongside factory race cars that Porsche had imported for this event, and true to form it set the fastest top speed of the weekend. The car was then sold to a buyer in Belgium, who has continued to race it to much success.
