“Porsche could never do this” Jan Kalmar, founder of KALMAR Automotive, insisted to me as we walked around the KALMAR 9X9 on the soft turf of The Quail. He was talking about the 3D-printed brake calipers in particular, though he could have been talking about the entire car.
Modified vintage Porsches were the thing at this year’s Monterey Car Show, ranging from whimsical reimaginings like the Porsche 911 Targa Hybrid from bb/Beau to the Tuthill GT One. And if on-road Porsches aren’t your thing, you could easily grab yourself a RUF Rodeo. Singer, Tuthill, bb, and RUF are all known in the Porsche world as established brands and all were on display at Monterey Car Week.
KALMAR is relatively less known, but the 9X9 on display wants to be the most extreme version of a 911-shaped thing you can buy. If you thought a Singer was a cost-is-no-option car, just wait until you get a closer look at this.
What Is The KALMAR 9×9?
The most famous high-performance production Porsche might be the Porsche 959, a car born out of FIA racing specs. The all-wheel-drive supercar did everything that an early ’80s 911 could do and took it to its logical extremes. There was only one 959, and Porsche, for various reasons, struggled to make a real production follow-up until the Porsche Carrera GT (unless you count the two Porsche 911 GT1 Straßenversions the company built).
This means the world was deprived of a Porsche supercar for the 993 era of 911. which covers the mid-1990s.
KALMAR is solving this oversight with the 9X9. Starting with a 993 donor car, the company and its suppliers do everything possible to add power and grip, and to remove weight. It’s why the company refers to the car as a “Retro Hypercar,” combining an era-appropriate aesthetic to the best of what modern technology offers.
This means engines out of the 992 (in the trim I’m looking at it’s the 993’s Turbo S flat-six squeeze to 930 horsepower) paired to the 992’s PDK transmission. If the PDK isn’t your bag, you can spec a Sport model that’s basically a 992 GTS 4 and its seven-speed manual or, hey, why not get the Leichtbau version with the 4.0-liter six and a six-speed manual? You’ve got options.
Up front, where the frunk should be, is a Danisi Engineering-designed double-wishbone push-rod front suspension because, sure, why not? The body has the greenhouse of a 993, but both the front and rear treatments feel a little more modern to me. Of course, the body has been entirely redesigned using carbon fiber to minimize weight and maximize downforce and very little of the 993 has been retained.
In fact, other than the interior and greenhouse section, most of the car’s subframes and all of the electronics come courtesy of a new 992 Porsche 911. Oh, yeah, in order to get one 9X9 you have to sacrifice a 993 (which you provide) and a 992 (which Jan provides).
The good news is that Jan loves 911s like the rest of us, and anything that isn’t needed for the final car is going to get put back into the Porsche ecosystem for other owners to buy.
Wait, What About That Headline? The Brakes Are $240,000!?!
Actually, the brakes are more expensive than that. The $240,000 figure is just the $60k per corner for the freaking calipers. Are these calipers made out of diamonds or freakin’ mithril?
Nope. The custom-designed, massive calipers are 3D-printed lightweight titanium. These are made by a company called CARBO Brake not too far from Kalmar’s Scandanavian HQ.
I had to run the math by Jan a few times just to make sure I was hearing it correctly. He insisted they cost about $60k a set and, to his main point, while Porsche might technically be capable of such engineering, it could never justify the cost of doing it to save a little unsprung weight.
Why do any of this? I’ll let the company’s website explain:
The rear callipers weigh just 1.8kg – some 51 per cent lighter than the original 993 example – while the fronts tip the scales at 2.0kg – 44 per cent lighter than a factory 993. Of course, unsprung mass is reduced too, with almost 10kg of rotating mass lost. In addition, the stiffness of our callipers is similar to that found on top level single seater racing cars. The body of the calliper itself is crafted from special motorsport-grade forged aluminium before being CNC machined. It is also nickel plated to provide an additional heat barrier and as a result, it is capable of a working temperature between 200 and 300°C. This is a whopping 200 per cent more than rival cast or forged aluminium products on the market.
You’ll also have to pay for ceramic brake discs and pads and fluid, but compared to the extremely bespoke calipers the price of that is all nominal.
So How Much Does The Whole Car Cost?
All of this is utterly ridiculous and over-the-top and probably too much car for me, but I do kind of like it. The 993 is one of my favorite 911s and I’m a big 959 fan. If you’re going to combine them into one car and charge a stupendous amount for them, why not go all the way? Why not embrace the inherent insanity of the moment and see just how insane you can get?
This is not a car that you look at and rev your Onan to while parking it outside of Harrods. It’s meant to be driven harder than anyone you’ve probably ever met can drive. And that ain’t cheap.
According to Jan, the price is about $2 million to start, though timing and currency fluctuations will impact this. Additionally, they only plan to make a few of these every year, so you might as well just fork over a little extra to get it exactly right.
This cost doesn’t include the 993. You’re going to have to buy a 993 if you don’t already own one, though given how much of the car is going to get chucked I wouldn’t necessarily fork over a fortune to get a Concours-grade donor car.
My suggestion is to get one that costs about $60k or, roughly, one caliper’s worth of 911.
[Ed Note: My suggestion is that you then just drive that 993 and save yourself $2 million, but that’s just me. -DT].
This design is just horrible and leaves me cold and full of ennui like Sprocket’s monkey. Take the Tuthill… that is similar but hits the bullseye as a perfect car. This? This is just a modified Porsche built by people trying way too hard to be impressive and failing. How do I really feel about it? It’s utter shite!
It’s not 9X9, it only has 4 wheels.
I must have missed something there.Are the calipers forged aluminium or 3D’d titanium?
This is confusing. Matt says 3D printed titanium, quote from company says nickle plated forged aluminum.
Aren’t those the same thing? /s
It’s spelled aluminum in the land of Eagles and Spelling Things Properly. You’re welcome.
Yet we can all agree that it isn’t spelled: titanium
Everyone forgets the engineering cost of some little shiny doodad. The design time, the functional development, the durability testing, the fixing of all the issues that come up.
I mean, just the massive sarcastic eye-roll I’ll do when you ask me to design a 3D printed titanium calliper from a nickel-plated billet of forged motorsport grade aluminium is going to cost you $10 in design engineer time, and that doesn’t include snorting derisively at you as you walk away.
Fun fact: as 3D printing takes time the end products have actually been 4D printed. That’s got to be worth tan extra 0 on the price.
44% lighter calipers huh…
Little did I know that a week worth of castor oil or Dulcolax could save me $240k. Or that driving with the tank at 1/10th full would be worth a couple of millio…OMG…the opportunities… THE POTENTIAL !!!
I need to make this my go to argument when someone suggests i buy a better mountain bike.It might not win the argument but it would stop the conversation stone dead XD
The license plates appear to be $35K 3D-printed scans of Dymo Tape. Hire an artist, guys.
“Shall we get the plates hand crafted from eagle penises by eighth generation sign-writing artisans from Paris?”
“Nah, let’s just go with some show plates from eBay, people will be tired of our overwrought bullshit after we’ve told them that Porsche couldn’t make brakes from 4D printed adamantium/vibranium metal-matrix like we did.”
“How about all the glass, that’s heavy, should we use motorsport engineering polymers or grow single crystal synthetic sapphires?”
“Use whatever Porsche used in the 90’s, like windows or whatever, we hooked the suckers with the brakes already.”
I’m an unashamed Porsche fanboy, but seriously, fuck this thing. I have a lot of love for Singer and even Gunther Werks, but this fuckin thing? It’s just spending money for the sake of spending money. I can just about guarantee that a GT3 RS or even a regular GT3 is a better driving experience. This isn’t for people who like cars, it’s for people who like conspicuous consumption. “Look at my $240k brake calipers!” Get fucked.
Also, are they 3D printed titanium, or are they “motorsport-grade” forged aluminum? Either way, the value is undoubtedly overstated.
Again, fuck this thing.
And then add a push rod suspension for more complexity and effective unsprung weight/inertia. But, wow, right?
I don’t want to stop looking at a Singer.
I don’t want to look at this thing at all.
There it is folks. The Veblen effect in car form.
Aren’t you jealous?
Buy, buy, buy!
Some bullshit.
Maybe one day, you too can purchase your way into significance.
This is more about ostentation and bragging rights than performance. I suppose a hedge fund manager who makes $1 billion a year can afford to put one in each of his starter castles.
A trench pig like me would turn $2 million into a house, acreage and half a dozen cars
The hedge fund manager who makes $1 billion a year is the trench pig.
The working class are the bodies piling up.
Nah, the hedge fund manager is a chateau general and us working stiffs are the ones “Eyes Deep in Hell”
I love cars, and fancy cars, even exotic cars, but I cannot find even a semblance of interest in these 1%er cars and their parts that cost as much as an entire Lamborghini or 4 BMWs.
The parts don’t cost anything near that much. They sell for it though.
At one point it says the calipers are 3D printed in titanium, then later they are machined from motorsport grade aluminum (what ever that is). So, which is it.
Noticed that too.
It’s gotta be billet aluminum. If it was 3d printed I cannot imagine it would be as strong as forged aluminum cut on a CNC. That said, the price is ridiculous.
This reeks of people using technical jargon to overwhelm the consumer. I am in the machining business, so I love when these guys try and technobabble at me.
Man, I can’t stand “CeRaMic CoaTinGs” with their nano particles and graphene quadrashells…. it’s friggin paint sealant.
Bugatti has done 3D printed titanium calipers before, so it is technically possible. Just looking at them, though, they’ve gotta be machined aluminum. If they were actually 3D printed, there would have been waaay more topology optimization done to make the pain-in-the-assery of 3D printing worth it.
The calipers seen at the top of the article and the ones seen on a table are different units. The first one look 3D printed and the other machined.
Maybe only the fronts are 3D printed? Anyway, that deserves some clarification
I’ve had about enough with this conspicuous consumption bullshit. Just a bunch of rich guys competing for who can spend more.
This. There are exactly 0 people who need this. And I’m going to go ahead and assume the people that want it are bad humans.
If this is the case, I’m the baddest MFer on the planet.
Well then…
Nice of you to be so open about your narcissistic nature.
Anyhoo…
Can I interest you in a trench pig?
History has proven your assumption correct, time and time again.
Preach brother.
You know, I’ve had the thought several times that these multi-million dollar restomod type builds should have a line item on the build sheet where they also buy a practical car for a family in need. What’s another $20k added to buy a decent used Sienna for that single parent who just needs reliable, basic transportation?
Nice!
They could easily bury that in the budget somewhere without even telling them.
The only redeeming fact is that the consumption means that some great mechanics and body guys get paid good money to do all the work. It’s taking some rich schmucks money and putting it back into the economy where it can do some good.
I say the more frivolous spending the better, I wish they would spend it all on things like this.
It’s a hell of a stretch to imply that it looks retro. To me, it looks very much like someone designed their take on what a modern 959 might look like over a 993 with some 935 mixed in at the rear. It’s almost the opposite of what they seemed to be going for. The more I see these kinds of seemingly endless fancy custom 911s, the further away I seem to get from understanding the whole Porsche thing. Price for the brakes is nonsense, too, or they’re really dumb in paying that . . . or they think their customers are dumb, which they’re probably right. Head number 3 wants me to write something nice and he says he likes the color and the seat pads look like they’d be fun to chew, so there you go.
As an engineer who has actually printed parts from titanium, the material/print cost of a part about that size would be around $3500. Add in post-machining sealing and critical datum surfaces, plus whatever finish they add and maybe you’re around $5k.
At $60k a corner, either their supplier is taking them for one hell of a ride, or more likely, they’re rolling all their engineering costs into the part cost, which for such a niche, low volume product, they probably have no choice but to do.
Or they are just bullshitters.
I mean yeah, my post was trying to point that out.
I’m not an engineer, but I have a pretty extensive background in manufacturing, so I kinda have an idea of what things SHOULD cost. My thought was that at most, those calipers are like $5-8k… And that’s assuming that they’re actually 3D printed titanium and not aluminum. If they’re just CNC machined aluminum, you can probably cut that price in half. Maybe less.
Even if they’re rolling all of the engineering cost into those things, $60k per corner is still wildly off base in my opinion. Brake calipers ain’t exactly rocket surgery. I’d be shocked if a set of calipers, pads, and discs on an F1 car are $240k.
I agree, and we’re saying the same thing about the actual manufacturing cost. I worded it poorly, but I meant either their printed caliper supplier is exorbitantly marking these up, or far more likely: KALMAR is charging $60k a corner factoring in $5k for the actual part, say $10k in developing the design, and the rest in very high margin just because they can.
You sound like PR for the manufacturer of the overpriced calipers.
How so? I said these probably cost around $5k per corner to manufacture, way less than $60k. Either the manufacturer is charging KALMAR an arm and a leg, or far more likely KALMAR is charging $60k just because they think they can.
Engineering new parts is a lot more expensive than people thing, but $60k a corner is nuts, and there’s no real excuse for it.
Imagine how many Dodge Omnis you could buy with that kind of money
All of them?
$240,000! Don’t you know you could buy three of those F-350 Centaurus pickups instead!
The 911 restomod stuff is really getting out of hand. I like the Singer approach better because it feels more period-correct and retains an oldschool air-cooled motor. This one just feels like a 992 re-shelled into a 993 with a body kit (which it is, I guess).
2 kg of gold is worth ~$160,000 so in that sense $60k per corner is a bargain.
This is the equivalent of the “I’m rich” app.
I need to get into the brake caliper business.
Also, how did they manage to make the front so ugly?
Also also, if you pay 2 million dollars for a 911 you are a buffoon.
Do I have the terminology wrong, because I don’t think of calipers as rotating mass.
Yep, same thought. I suspect wheels or discs somehow got confused in translation or something.
They (whoever) probably got ‘rotating mass’ mixed up with ‘unsprung weight’.
Are the calipers aluminum or titanium ? this says both- and surprised they can’t make them out of carbon fibre with a sleeve, after all if you can make a submarine out of the stuff it should handle brake fluid pressure
Yeah, Matt seems to have lost the thread of the article somewhere along the way. Very confusing.
You can make a submarine out of whatever you want. Whether it survives or is remotely fit for purpose is another matter.
When even Hollywood DT has to add an editors note to dunk on the stupidity of this thing, they sailed over the shark some ways back
This isn’t jumping the shark.
This is entering low earth orbit above the shark.