There’s a good chance you’ve never seen this car before, not even in photos. It’s the 1997 Gemballa Extremo RUF, which cost an estimated $2 million back when it was new and features bespoke carbon fiber bodywork that leaves the Porsche 993 Turbo base car completely unrecognizable.
This yellow speedster, which is one of only two ever made, just sold at the Bonhams auction in Paris for €379,500 ($417,225). After that, it landed at the vintage exotic car dealership Curated at the same time as the Miami F1 GP.
When you hear “Gemballa“, you know the car is going to look wild. But this Porsche doesn’t look like the famous widebody Mercedes and Ferrari custom creations that made Uwe so famous in the 1980s. Instead, this has the more streamlined look of 1990s Italian cars. This is obviously speculative, but the man must have been looking at a Ferrari F50 for way too long when he made the Extemo RUF.
The Extremo has the same transparent headlight look as the F50, which came out in 1995, but also imitates the 550 Maranello. As we’ve mentioned, there are only two of these in the world. The first is the Gemballa Extremo Bi-Turbo Speedster, which was commissioned by the German tire brand Fulda, which wanted to show off its new performance tire called… the Extremo. Very creative.
Unless we’re mistaken, that one was black, and there are very few pictures of it. This is car #2, commissioned by Sheik Abdul Mohsin of Saudi Arabia. Fulda had an event in Dubai, and the Sheik wanted the car, but they wouldn’t sell it, so Gemballa was tasked with making a second example which was even bolder than the first.
Not only did the Shock Yellow (Schock Gelb) paint make it much bolder, but its power was increased. The Extremo is based on the 993 Turbo, which was the first Porsche mass-production car to feature a twin-turbocharged engine, as well as AWD. It made 402 horsepower stock. Fulda’s car had 500, but the Dubai model delivered somewhere between 600 and 700 hp, which is crazy for a Porsche from the air-cooled era.
It could reportedly hit 60 mph in 3.6 seconds and reach a top speed of 220 miles per hour. This was at the peak of Porsche tuning potential in the late 1990s, had a lot of carbon fiber custom bodywork and yet it’s depreciated 5 times in over two decades. One thing is for sure; John Temerian now has a unique F50-looking Porsche with a special story that he can sell.
