To clearly differentiate it from other 911 models, Porsche started looking for a new name under which to sell its most powerful model in mid-1972. For the first time, the ‘Carrera’ script adorned the side profile between the wheel arches on the 911 Carrera RS 2.7. The Spanish word translates as ‘race’ in English, and RS on the rear spoiler stands for ‘Rennsport’, or ‘racing’.
For Porsche, the ‘Carrera Panamericana’ was the inspiration for the new name. In 1953, Porsche claimed its first-class victory in the endurance race with the 550 Spyder. Then, in 1954, it finished third overall – a sensation that sparked the new addition to the name.
In the years that followed, Porsche used the name Carrera for its most powerful vehicles with the 1954 four-camshaft/Fuhrmann engine, such as the 356 A 1500 GS Carrera or the 356 B 2000 GS Carrera GT. The Carrera script adorned the rear of the Porsche 904 Carrera GTS from 1963, and on the 906 Carrera 6 from 1965 it could be found on the wing behind the front wheel arch. According to statements made at the time, Carrera was also understood to be a “quality predicate for a technical delicacy that had proven itself on racetracks and rally circuits”. In short, it was the ideal name for the future top-of-the-range model of the 911. “We wanted to assign the already famous ‘Carrera’ name to a production model and thought about how we could best represent that,” recalls Harm Lagaaij, who was a designer at Porsche at the time. They decided on the area between the wheel arches.
The first designs placed the lettering at the bottom of the sill in a contrasting colour to the body paint, framed by light shading. “But if the paint had been dark, the name would have been very difficult to read,” he explains. This design is only found on the first prototypes and the first vehicles delivered – in contemporary brochures, for example.
Lagaaij and his team went on to develop a second proposal. For typography, they stuck with existing variants and made minimal modifications to the lettering. The letters of the nameplate were now framed in a contrasting colour to the body paint, crossed by a wide stripe in the same colour. “Since the 911 Carrera RS 2.7 was mostly sold only in light paint colours, the lettering was very easy to read,” says Lagaaij. It became a blueprint for decades to come.
In addition to the Carrera lettering, Porsche had other eye-catching design features to offer: 29 paint tones were available, some in striking colours, and 27 were produced, including colours such as Bright Yellow, Red and Blood Orange. Porsche also fulfilled individual customer colour requests. The colour of the rims matched either the body or the Carrera lettering on the sides (in, for example, white vehicles with red, blue or green lettering). The Carrera lettering retains its pre-eminent significance to this day, as does the long-famous RS abbreviation. It is used again and again for particularly spirited 911 models.