For the Southern California Porsche show Air|Water at the end of April, custom coachbuilder Stärke Motor Company brought out the company’s second-generation Speedster prototype. Neither a restored Porsche nor a restomod, instead the Stärke Speedster builds on the backbone of the 2017-and-onward 718 Boxster platform. The design harks back to the days when Porsche’s lightweight cars outperformed big American V8s and Italian V12s in the early era of motorsport.
After Air|Water, Stärke CEO Seth Gortenburg stuck around SoCal to host media drives. I joined for a crisp spring day off the Pacific Ocean Highway in Malibu, just about the perfect scene and setting to enjoy some of that quintessential James Dean sun-drenched lifestyle and suss out how Stärke’s vision for a Speedster translates to the modern age.
The Stärke design clearly references Porsche’s earliest models, including the mid-engined 550 Spyder and 718 RSK, as well as the rear-engined “bathtub” 356 Cabriolet that preceded the original 911. Photos struggle to do the form justice, however. Smooth and low and wide, with retro details right down to the headlights and fogs, this Speedster nonetheless occupies a much larger footprint than any of those classics. Even the custom wheels, one-offs that Gortenburg dubbed the “Wide Five” design, nearly replicate original Porsche steelies.
Creating this body required 3D scanning and CAD renderings, then two years to source hand-laid body panels to update Stärke’s original 981-based project to the newer 718. Installing the panels then requires removing the body as much as possible, including cutting off the doors and rear panels. The front clip mounts using all the factory bolting location, the inner fenders bond to the rear quarter-panels for additional stability, and the side strakes feed the Boxster’s original engine air intakes.
No, nobody will mistake a Stärke Speedster for an original Porsche. And Porsche purists may balk at the whole concept in the first place. But with these kinds of custom projects, if the most important questions always emerge about design decisions, engineering always takes priority, as well. In this case, I pulled up to meet Gortenburg and the Speedster, wondering how the built quality lives up to Stuttgart standards.
I came away convinced that everything about the Stärke makes the most sense when viewed from the lens of Gortenburg’s American hot-rodding background. In person, the metallic silver paint shimmers with endless depth. The panel gaps and alignment from front to rear line up perfectly. And once I climbed behind the wheel, I noticed zero creaks, clunks, or rattles – other than some wind noise from the factory Porsche convertible, anyhow.
Stärke can swap the Speedster body onto any 718 Boxster, from the 300-horsepower turbo-four base model to the Boxster S with 350 ponies, or even the 394-hp GTS 4.0 with that incredible 7,800-rpm flat six. Each comes with the choice of a six-speed manual or seven-speed PDK gearbox, and when optioned with Stärke’s standard fiberglass panels, weighs about the same as the original car.
That means the 718 Boxster’s impeccable driving dynamics carry over, too. This second prototype started life as a base turbo-four with PDK, so not exactly a ripper but still one of the most balanced sports cars ever made. The steering and suspension perfectly straddle the line between comfort and compliance, with a low center of gravity that makes any day in Malibu an absolute joy.
“That's one of the beauties about what we're doing,” Gortenburg explained from the passenger seat. “You know, a 356 is beautiful, but there’s not a lot of horsepower there, and they didn't handle that great. These cars can handle, the GTS has so much horsepower that they’re just so much fun to drive, and they're made to drive hard.”
Gortenburg purposefully started with the base car for this prototype because he wanted to sort out any potential problems before beginning a customer build. Over the course of my drive, my main gripe about the Speedster design versus the original Boxster came down to the extended front overhang and low ride height. Without a front-axle lift system, I worried about driveways, speed bumps, and turnouts – which the prospect of choosing Stärke’s optional carbon fiber only exacerbates.
Going for the carbon does cut a couple of hundred pounds, though, and Gortenburg claims the material makes the process easier, as well. Given that a Boxster weighs right around 3,000 pounds, depending on powertrain, that weight savings should result in noticeable improvements while driving hard. Most importantly, though, while retaining all the cornering capability of a Boxster in a retro package, the comfort and convenience of a modern car carries over, too. No more worrying about tuning carburetors, adjusting valves, or the constant oil leaks of an air-cooled engined.
“The styling of the old Porsche was iconic; it’s one of the most amazing designs ever, in my opinion,” Gortenburg admitted. “But you know, I'm at a point where I sure want those side windows, and I want that power top and that air conditioner, so this is kind of the best of both worlds.”
Plus, any Porsche dealer or mechanic worth their salt should be able to work on the Stärke Speedster with ease. My other main criticism? The choice to skip out on the GTS 4.0’s absolutely peak engine and unique chassis tuning for this prototype, as well as the stick shift and clutch pedal. The rasping flat-six all the better emphasizes Porsche’s long history of rear and mid-engined screamers. Then again, I can understand clients who might want to enhance the ease of use while cruising, as the PDK dual-clutch takes care of gear changes.
Stärke will help customers source the donor car to begin this process, and recommends starting by choosing an interior spec so that the majority of upholstery and trim finishing takes as little time and effort as possible. The exterior gets removed anyway, to make way for the new body. Personally, I’d go with the classic metallic silver for the paint job, as on the car I drove. A rich black might also help, for a slimming effect, as with black jeans or slim dresses. On the inside, Boxster Red matches the silver perfectly, but a Pepita houndstooth overhaul in the cabin might fit best with a darker tone.
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Pricing starts at $135,000, or if Stärke helps to source the donor car, then $189,000 before personalization. The 718 ended production late last year, with no concrete plans for a replacement yet underway, which appears to be bolstering values on the used market (and especially for the higher-spec models). A base equipped with PDK typically starts around $40,000, depending on mileage and condition, while the GTS 4.0 with a manual can easily eclipse six figures. The rest of Stärke’s ask goes toward amortizing the design and development, the extensive labor hours of completing the body swap, and hundreds of miles of shakedown testing to ensure that the rock-solid Porsche durability still shines through.
“We're hot-rodders at heart,” said Gortenburg. “Building cars, there's always a rattle here and there. You’ve got to work through the issues. So as we build the cars, we find little things that we can do better. We've worked through most of the problems now, and each car we do gets a little bit better.”
Clearly, Air|Water went well for Gortenburg and the Stärke Speedster, as each build takes about six months to finish, but the order roll now requires approximately a one-year wait. Around 12 weeks of that process goes into crafting the body panels alone. And for anyone who potentially thinks the wider, flatter design grafted onto a 718 Boxster misses the aesthetic mark, Gortenburg admitted a Cayman-based coupe may eventually emerge to match.
Porschephiles may well scorn the concept of a project that blends this mix of old and new style and performance, but at least Stärke never takes the knife to older, rarer air-cooled models. And in comparison to wild restomods so popular these days, the concept makes more sense than shoehorning modern powertrains into old monocoque chassis. The final aesthetic always comes down to the buyer’s personal preferences, anyhow.
“We've done cars that are 100% traditional, we've done cars that are more of a restomod look,” Gortenburg told me. “We like them all. It's not the exact proportions of a 356, but we're just trying to capture the essence of the old car.”
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Images: Michael Van Runkle
