I didn’t expect when I went to sleep last night to wake up with a nostalgia for 2008, but somehow—thanks to this incredible Porsche drift car—that’s exactly what happened. Back then I was still in college and was consuming possibly even more automotive media than I do now, and I was absolutely enamoured with Formula Drift and Tyler McQuarrie’s JIC-Magic Hankook Porsche 993 GT2 drift car. Last night it was doing delicate pirouettes in my dreams.
This all started a few days ago when pro-drifter-turned-2019-IMSA-GS-Champion Tyler McQuarrie posted about his old Porsche on Instagram. He was prompted to do so because an account called Porsche Club Russia ripped a Speedhunters video off of YouTube and posted it to IG. It’s weird how the world works, we’re all intertwined. The actions of a Russian content aggregator clickfarm trickled down to affect my dreams last night and inspired this here post.
McQuarrie never won a round of the Formula D in this car, but he knew from the outset that it could have been a real contender. Unfortunately the turbocharged 3.8-litre flat six slung out back kept eating valve springs through the season. If it didn’t eat its engine, the Porsche was fast and easily dialed, taking a podium at the revered Englishtown round that year. Because it had a ton of weight slung out back the team installed a massive fuel cell which they could fill or empty depending on how McQuarrie wanted the car to handle. That’s genius, if I’m quite honest.
In the Instagram thread Tyler mentions that this video was the first time he’d ever driven the car, and knew it had potential. Allegedly the car was built from a real Porsche 993 GT2. In 2008 that was just a used race car from two generations of 911 ago, and could be had for relatively little money. These days a 993 GT2 can bring close to a million dollars.
Sadly the JIC-Magic car was lost to time and was probably restored back to whatever it was before it began drifting. It’s likely sitting in some private Porsche collection somewhere in a climate controlled bubble, dreaming, just like me, of its former 315mm section width Hankook-melting glory.
It’s a shame that it’s gone, but it will always be remembered.