- A tribute to rally cars of the ’70s

- Could debut later this year

The 992-gen Porsche 911 has just arrived and the line-up has started to expand quickly. We saw the insane GT3 join the S, Carrera, Targa, Turbo and the Spyder of each of these iterations. But Porsche was recently spotted at the ‘Ring flexing the muscle of a 911 prototype with a rather peculiar character.

This 911 with the raised ride height is rumoured to be the long-awaited 911 Safari, a tribute line-up to the Porsche’s rally-spec models from the 1970-80s. The jacked-up version on the Nurburgring come with modified wheel arches to accommodate chunkier tyres. Even the bumpers both fore and aft appear to be reworked to help the 911 Safari’s off-road credential.

Seemingly based on the Carrera S, the 911 Safari is likely to carry on the standard powertrain with some changes to the final drivetrain. It would benefit from the 4S all-wheel-drive setup while a manual transmission doesn’t seem to be a preferred choice here. No other details of this lifted 911 are available at the moment.

Whether or not Porsche will prefer calling this off-roady 911 with a Safari suffix isn’t confirmed either. But given the rich herniate of the Safari name when Porsche pitted it in the gruesome Paris-Dakar Rally, it only makes sense to resurrect the name instead of adopting a new motif. This high-riding 911 is expected to debut later this year.