This Insane Rally Porsche Might Be the Best Car Ever Made

Driving a rally-prepped Porsche on a frozen lake north of the Arctic Circle sounds like a bucket-list fantasy—but after a full day behind the wheel in Finland, it turned into the single greatest driving experience of my life. From sliding classic 911s across ice to ripping through snow-covered rally stages, this wasn’t just another press trip—it was a masterclass in control, speed, and pure adrenaline.

I’ve driven everything from hypercars to desert racers, but nothing compares to what Kalmar Automotive is doing with its off-road Porsches. On a remote stretch of Arctic wilderness, I found the best driver’s car I’ve ever experienced—and the most unforgettable day I’ve ever had behind the wheel.

Such a statement bears some context, in this absurd career called automotive journalism. I once drove a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport as fast as possible through the French countryside and then ate a Michelin-starred meal on the factory floor. Lamborghini, somewhat incomprehensibly, let me drive a Huracán Sterrato at 100 miles an hour (and more) through the desert. And Ford launched even the Bronco Raptor with a day of rock crawling at the King of the Hammers race course.

Still, a day with a Porsche-centric company called Kalmar Automotive, smack-dab in the middle of a dark Finnish winter, left me lamenting that the greatest experience of a stupefyingly awesome few years may well lie in the rearview mirror.

Adventures in a Winter Wonderland

Founder Jan Kalmar spent years with Porsche proper exploring Finland for customer and media drive programs, then got fed up with the timidity typical of a regimented corporate environment and started hosting his own safari-style adventures across the globe with the motto “We start where others stop.” Kalmar himself entirely lacks tact, a trait that helps establish this trustworthiness as something between a modern mad scientist and an 18th-century expedition leader. The builds required to live up to both his mindset and that slogan—911s of all generations, but also Cayenne SUVs and even mid-engined Caymans—feature extensive prep in order to survive weeks of brutal treatment across Africa, South America, and Australia.

A Kalmar trip always stops at the most spectacular locations available, either erecting tiny tent cities or loafing about the swankiest hotels on Earth. But the regulation-style rally timing forces Kalmar’s participants into a level of camaraderie so often lost in the otherwise ostentatious indulgence of so many resort-style vacations. Then, the realization hit that all the suspension lifts, armoring, and off-road kit also perfectly prepared Kalmar Automotive’s cars for ice driving—and so the journey came full circle, back to Finland for a separate winter series dubbed “Spirit of Speed.”

“We do not change anything on the cars when we go through the jungle in South America or through the desert in Africa,” Kalmar said. “All the protection we made, I realized that's actually really good for snow and ice. So suddenly we had this program that was not only winter, but was more of a society, in a way.

“That's not to say our people first go to winter and then they go through summer. It's absolutely crossover, we have many that have done first summer and then go to winter and then winter that have gone through summer. I think what people appreciate with us, is more the DNA that we are in it with our clients. We stay in the same lodge. We eat together with them. I don't do master and servant, and the ultra-rich actually appreciate that, like they can be themselves.”

Kalmar believes in skipping helmets and HANS devices for winter driving, a signal of the relative low risk and high reward inherent to sliding around on ice or in snow. But perhaps the main factor that separates the hardcore spirit at Kalmar’s program comes down to the tires, full world rally-spec studded rubber that Michelin provides to take Spirit of Speed to another level of, yes, speed. In fact, the tires need to go back to Michelin at the end of each 10-week season Kalmar spends southwest of Levi, Finland, so that other tiremakers can’t tear them apart and reverse engineer the technology within. Compared to previous ice driving I’ve done on road-legal all-season, studless winter, and studded tires, the pace immediately took my breath away.

My instructor throughout my day at the site of an abandoned iron mine, professional TV precision driver Joe Hopkins, warned me in advance that he planned to push my limits. Jan Kalmar himself said that if I never needed a tow out of a snow bank, he’d consider the day a failure. But I still ramped up with a bit of purposeful hesitation, starting out on the typical coned slalom and drift donut ring so that Hopkins could get a feel for my abilities. Almost immediately, he started barking out through the radio that I needed to push harder, widen my steering angle to drift out harder, and even finish the slalom fully sideways through the stop box. OK….

Comprehending the Kalmar Way

My first car, a modestly stock (in Kalmar terms) 964-generation Porsche 911 nicknamed Red Dot, gave me a chance to adjust to rear-engined weight distribution. And nowhere reveals a vehicle’s inherent balance better than an icy surface—hence why automakers spend so much time accelerating development timelines in winter driving. But the 964 is still a fairly primitive car, in many ways more similar to a Porsche from 1964 than 2026 thanks to torsion bars and trailing arms, primitive rack-and-pinion steering, and that air-cooled engine. Kalmar updated Red Dot with the most utilitarian “RS” (for “ Rally Special”) components, including a suspension lift with reinforced top mounts and spring plates and upgraded axles to handle more wheel articulation, all as the narrow WRC tires looked almost comically narrow beneath the quintessential 911 rear fenders.

And yet, as I got into the groove with the light steering, floor-hinging clutch, and buttery shifter, I started to sling around harder and wider, opposite-lock on full display until I punched too hard into the throttle and spun out for my first time on the donut circle. Hopkins coached me to keep my vision up and around the ring, to trust steering inputs less and instead direct the car more by harnessing weight transfer and throttle input, letting those tungsten studs find grip purposefully. Then I brought out a laugh by whipping around in a purposeful 180 to drive the other direction.

Right as I started to feel an edge of confidence in Red Dot, Hopkins got bored and swapped me into a 993-gen 911 wrapped in a yellow African-inspired motif and fittingly named “Rising Sun.” Still air-cooled, the 993 generation added a multi-link rear suspension and at least for Rising Sun, much heavier steering. The weight and power gains for this final 911 before water-cooling immediately allowed for easier slides, as the rear end’s refinement skated across the ice much more smoothly. But the 964’s tail end felt less pendulous by a fair margin—plus, the seating position fit my six-foot-one body a bit better.

In Rising Sun, I quickly graduated from the intro slalom and donuts to chasing Hopkins around the beginner circuits. Customers might take a full day on these steps alone, but I spent my single available day essentially condensing a typical three-day Spirit of Speed program into one. I figured plenty of previous ice and off-road driving helped accelerate my development, but Jan Kalmar actually explained how many customers return year after year—and how hard they push, often finding their own limits and the limits of their own cars.

“When they come here, even the 64-year-old ladies, they're like, ‘I want to go faster, faster, how do I do this more?’” he laughed. “And that's kind of what we try to achieve. So in a way, we lure them a little bit in with pictures of nice lodges and everything, but we are here for driving….”

Soon enough, I jumped into my first of multiple customer cars on site, a Cayman R wrapped in blue and known as Mustang Sally. Nobody could tell me the satisfactory origins of that moniker, but Hopkins waylaid any fears I felt about pushing Mustang Sally hard by pointing out the swath of duct tape on the nose—where the owner had just the previous week jumped his own Cayman into a tree. Don’t be that guy, I figured as usual. But I also needed a whole 'nother adjustment period, since Mustang Sally represented a return to my more typical mid-engined life, with feathery power steering and a paddle-shifted automatic gearbox built with much shorter gear ratios.

I quickly abandoned the paddle shifters, instead using the typical gear selector on the center console to hold the PDK mostly in third, fourth, and fifth gear as I whipped the steering wheel from side to side. The introduction of far more modern and effective anti-lock braking also threw me for a loop—literal, not figural—as the chattering at my toe sent more grip into the nose, which automakers purposefully prompt to provide more easily controlled understeer. But understeer sucks on an ice course, typically resulting in getting beached up on a snowbank, so I then overcompensated with too much throttle and spun out a few times.

Mid-Engined and Modern, But Is That A Good Thing?

I started focusing on sending the Cayman’s shoulders around the bends first, slinging through with momentum as with other mid-engined cars and trying to set the front end a bit less. Even further reducing my steering input, I let the tires scrabble around and push out while I merely provided gentle hints of directionality. And once more, as soon as I found that rhythm, Hopkins wanted me to get another hard reset: this time into a 997-generation Carrera 4.

I usually do best in all-wheel-drive cars, so I hopped in with a bit of excitement, ready to show off. Guess again! By now I’d graduated to the 9X9 circuit, a huge loop around the frozen reservoir named after Kalmar’s forthcoming restomod-supercar creation. Here, wider sweepers let me find crazy speeds thanks to the AWD, before a number of tighter transitions promised to catch me out.

Even if I loved the easily accessible power of the larger water-cooled flat-six and the return to a rear-engined car versus the mid-engined Cayman, the 997 only vexed me further. First of all, the weight gains from 964 to 997 immediately stood out. This C4 also featured PDK, but mostly the ABS caused issues. I tried to step back to what worked for the similarly modern Cayman, but even when I lifted off the brake pedal, the chatter kept engaging for a solid second afterward regardless. My speeds increased only thanks to power—the worst way for driver “skill” to reveal itself, rather than gaining pace through the tight twisties.

Then, as I ripped around, a 9X9 prototype appeared on the circuit next to me. My eyes deceiving me in the polar light, surely—but no, the apparition pulled into the pits with me, too. This sole prototype featured an AWD 992-generation Turbo S powertrain upon debut 18 months prior, when I first met Jan Kalmar. But now in Finland, all of a sudden I spied a manual gear shifter and a 10,000-RPM tachometer emblazoned with a GT3 logo. Praises to the Porsche gods above!

The 9X9 looked hyperfuturistic, even next to the 997, and rode on more typical studded tires rather than the aggressive WRC setup. Smooth and capable in the hands of its main development driver, this lightweighted and aerodynamically optimized vision simply glided around the track, looking every bit of its $2 million starting pricetag.

But after peeking into the 9X9, Hopkins then directed me into another customer car, and everything else flew out the window. Simply put, RS-R #0 is the greatest car I have ever driven—though it took more than a few laps on the long circuit for me to figure out our relationship. Especially after Jan Kalmar asked me to show some restraint, despite also showing me a pic of the selfsame car flipped on its roof with the two owners standing in front, beaming.

The Single Greatest Car Probably Ever

RS-R #0 started life as a 964, but in the hands of Kalmar Automotive steadily transformed into something that combines elements of their “regular” 7-97 Evo, with a healthy dose of RSR race cars, rally cars, and even modern McLaren DNA thrown in for good measure. Lifted over subframe spacers, with kevlar body panels and fully aluminum underbody protection, plus a crazy 4.1-liter air-cooled flat-six that becomes absolutely raucous deep into throttle, a torque monster that somehow also unleashes a peak 375 hp worth of blattering insanity from 4,000 RPM to the redline signified by a Danish flag painted on the tach, all harnessed by a Numeric shifter so notchy and precise for the uprated six-speed transaxle, the tiny little Momo steering wheel, hydraulic handbrake, bull bars front and rear.

Any number of Porsche builders might scoff at one element that makes the RS-R so great as par for the “safari” restomod course. But the combination staves off such naysaying, and most critically, the suspension setup that Kalmar developed specifically for this car, which deletes sway bars in the name of a hydraulic roll control system that can both lift the car 45mm at the press of a button or work with the active shocks to manage body roll. McLarens, Rivians, and the Defender Octa might use something similar—to varying levels of success—but in a lightweight and lifted rear-engined analog racing 911, the effect sent me straight to the moon.

Never before have I spent so much time manipulating mass, sensing the loss and gain of traction through those stupendous tires as I dove hard onto the nose at full braking, inputting just a teensy flick of steering before sliding gracefully—eternally—transitioning to a light then deeper and deeper squat, wagging that tail end while drifting deeper into turns with just a quick nudge of the right big toe, then ripping out onto the straights again, never quite straightening out, banshee wail approaching redline, another gear or two up with a bang of the crispy shifter, and then starting all over again by slamming every ounce of weight available forward again onto those front studs.

The main indicator of my evolving technique: my hands staying calmer and smoother on the steering wheel rather than sawing about trying to overcompensate. I began to suspect that rally modifications on older cars work better because the original engineering depended upon narrower tires. Not as narrow as the 155mm WRC racing rubber, but certainly far less than the 315mm rear tires on a modern GT3, for example. However, the big studs, 7mm exposed and 20mm hidden as ballast, do add weight—so Kalmar uses magnesium wheels, which then tend to fracture on the coldest winter days.

Luckily, with “high” temps holding in the low-single-digits Fahrenheit, the RS-R happily leapt about, a billy goat frollicking in the snow and ice, so perfectly balanced that I subconsciously started throwing my hips around in the racing bucket to help shift the car’s mass at the right times. Whether doing so actually helped me nail each corner or not, the fact that any car might even come close to responding to such patently absurd physical driver inputs took me straight back to ripping high-powered lightweight superbikes around Laguna Seca, or jumping dirt bikes on a motocross track.

Practice Makes Perfect, Approximately

After a quick break for lunch, a hearty Nordic stew and piping hot coffee plus a moment to warm up next to the woodstove in a cozy minimalist hut, the day proceeded onto a trio of more rallycross-inspired circuits. Here, the ante upped in a big way, with far more elevation change than a flat frozen lake, tighter paths surrounded by deeper berms, and inconsistent lighting to blind my eyes amidst the white nothingness. The additional risk seemed a bit over the top for me to keep up the revelry in the RS-R, so I jumped back into my “normal” 964, Red Dot, once again.

Hopkins gave me a quick tip about left-foot braking, advising me to keep my knees pressed together as I wiggled around in Red Dot’s looser seat. Rather than dedicated trail braking or trying to minimize time lost by moving my right foot from throttle to brake, I started physically pushing both pedals at the same time. With the 911’s rear-engined weight distribution, front brake bias, and high-revving power delivery, I started absolutely nailing a magic combo of precision at greater and greater speeds. Red Dot spun on a metaphorical and physical dot every time now, fully backing in while the tip and tail brushed and skirted snowbanks with balletic precision.

Faster and faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death—or worse, the killing of a sacred car. And yet, eventually my skills steadily caught up to the pace. Nothing beats the sensation of linking up tight transitions: Jump, dive, slide and hold, trust, then goose in some power and again jump, dive, slide, and hold, more trust and more trust, vision ahead, searching for grip where snow and ice look perfect, and out onto long sweepers at 100, 130, 160 kph sideways, holding steering angle beyond belief, before timing a heel-toe downshift with more precision than ever and starting the whole dance again.

Therein lies the magic of Kalmar’s approach, clearly not using these Porsches as garage queens but almost more importantly, never treating me like royalty either. Adapt, evolve, improve—less you face an angry coach, even light ribbing, or true ridicule if the moment calls for a bit of peer pressure.

Then Hopkins came on the radio again, telling me to cut out the pretty stuff and step up my pace. And not just by a bit, by a full 10 percent: he wanted me to purposefully push past my limits and lose control. Immediately, I whiffed about and stuffed it backward directly into a snowbank. No damage to Red Dot’s tail, though, so I just powered back out and kept trying. Another spin, I simply kept on the gas to push up and through the pile of snow, trusting the WRC studs to create grip in the fluff.

“In the first three turns, we know how our next few days are going to be,” Kalmar said. “Only with adult people, self-thinking individuals and not robots, is that possible. We ask, ‘Do you want to learn more?’ And most of our guests say, ‘Of course, that's what we're here for!’”

Off of the Ice Lake and Into the Woods

Driving in the woods next seemed more appropriate for at least some hesitancy, though, so I peppered Hopkins with the old skiing joke that “Trees don’t move.” Then again, as a sort of response, he pointed out where the Cayman’s front corner made contact with a tall pine, which looked a solid 12 feet in the air to me. The car still ran for the rest of that day, and for my full day, too. Durability in the face of all this abuse sets these Kalmar cars apart from the typical Sunday morning car meet safari builds, not to mention Porsche’s own 992-generation Dakar.

My own test came nearer to the end of the day, still in Red Dot but out on a course where Kalmar times every customer against the clock on a sort of out-and-back lap. Maybe a mile or a bit more, with a few S turns, acceleration and braking zones, then a tight hairpin around a cone to set up the return, and finally coming to a complete stop back in the stop/start box. Hopkins told me that missing the stop box either short or long costs five seconds per axle, but also asked me not to burn out too hard off the line. The big WRC studs simply tear into the ice too quickly—but that’s also not the fastest way to launch, either

I feathered the throttle as Hopkins pulled out a stopwatch (read: iPhone) and counted me down. Let out the clutch and managed a fairly tedious start, despite urgently wanting to build speed and revs as much as possible from the air-cooled engine. I had purposefully determined to do some rally-style driving rather than drifting, unlike much of my time on the lake. By that I mean cutting slides down into tighter angles and straighter lines. So of course, I immediately overbraked into the first turn, slid well past apex, and then at least managed a solid right-left-right transition out onto the longish, crookedish straight.

Remembering Hopkins’ advice to not crash into a Volvo logging truck, I lifted off a bit to set the front tires into the last mild right hander, then promptly overcooked the 180 at the cone. On the return, I once again pushed a bit past the fast side of slidey, then braked a little early into the stop box. Still, Hopkins said I managed a solid time in the realm of a minute 20. Each customer gets three tries, luckily.

Riding High on Victory

The next launch I spun the tires a bit too much, but nailed the whole course—even the hairpin and the stop box, which brought on the very limit of the 964’s primitive ABS. Hopkins whistled, claiming I’d just set the second-best time of any customer ever, with a 1:17.37. I laughed, incredulous, and told him I felt like I’d left a lot more on the table.

I whiffed the third launch badly, revving too hard in adrenaline junkie mode and killing my acceleration before the first corner. But again, absolute glory on the rest of the course, and a finish with an over exuberant final braking point that led to my front axle stopping just on the right end of the stop box line (count it!), though going that long maybe added a few hundredths of a tick. Still, I shaved another six-hundredths—not good enough for the overall record, but I set a solid second place in the slowest car out of Kalmar’s whole fleet. Not bad, I thought. Hopkins in his understated stiff upper lip British: “Good lord, you can drive, mate.”

What a compliment, and maybe the last thing a journalist’s overinflated ego ever needs to hear. But as my reward, I spent the rest of the day out on the longest 9X9 course and once again back in the greatest car ever made. Kalmar himself even came out to join us after Hopkins told him my times, and though I would have happily spent the last few hours of the day approaching automotive nirvana (or I suppose more accurately for scene and setting, Valhalla) in the RS-R, a new idea began to crop up.

Apparently, Kalmar felt impressed enough that I might not crash the actual 9X9, so he reached a decision: I’d be the very first journalist to ever drive the car on ice. He personally asked me to use a bit of caution, since just the front carbon splitter costs more than all the cars I own combined. Even at two-thirds, then three-quarters pace, though, the 9X9 on the 9X9 course unified everything into one single frame. Modern suspension, so taut and yet smooth because of the weight savings and an innovative third element that helps with both mass control and aero, wider tires and yet no WRC studs, an absolutely perfect chassis for absorbing the lumpy and wavy ice without ever getting herky-jerky. And of course, the miracle of a modern GT3 powertrain, in a way reminiscent of the RS-R’s 4.1-liter but with even quicker throttle response, so much more power, revs to infinity and beyond, the stubby shifter just a thing of beauty.

After approval for an extra lap, when I managed to nail a few nice turns and crank out plenty of steering angle despite lacking that final edge of commitment in something so precious, I swapped back out. Everyone sort of chuckled—here’s what two million (to start!) and years of knowledge, skill, driving, and breaking stuff can get you. Lightweight, rear-engine, aero supremacy, and a good-old-fashioned clutch pedal. Not quite a restomod, though enough of one to count for registration in stricter regions, but also something far more engaging than any supercar. And I’ve driven them all (or near enough).

Finding the Flow State Once More

But would I take a brand-new 9X9 over my beloved RS-R? Personally, the rally pods and rougher edges of the older car fit my life so much better. Hopkins saw the glint in my eye, sun starting to sink low, so he showed me how to flick on those rally lights and set me out for as many laps as the minute hand might let me run. How to hold onto, grasp desperately at, fleeting perfection?

The RS-R and I fell into our flow again immediately, sun entirely dipped below the horizon now, lights blurring the low snowbanks as I reached that specious existence where physical existence moves through time without the interference of conscious effort. Senna at Monaco, Jordan in the 'flu game, Doc Ellis painting the corners in his LSD No-No…

Then Hopkins came over the wavelengths and called me in for the last time. Crisis mode. Do I simply drive off into the deep Finnish woods, never to be seen or heard from again, but at least evading the law in the world’s single greatest car? Tempting.

That night I joined incoming customers for a splendid Nordic dinner. Jan Kalmar gave me a hiding for never needing a tow. A quartet of old hands shared Kalmar-esque reminiscences of rally timers and desert nights and crashes and rebuilding an air-cooled flat-six overnight on a Peruvian beach. A new duo eagerly asked what Kalmar’s slogan truly means in the era of excessively Instagrammable experiences. Everybody seeking that ultimate automotive thrill somehow lurking so far north in the Arctic tundra.

After dinner, I hit the sauna to help my adrenaline subside, and finally noticed reality beginning to set in, the sense of a momentous occasion passed, an absolutely absurd day impossible to top even amid an absurd life. The wheels start turning again on the next day’s flight home, well before sunrise. Sure, I want to go blast around Morocco, Namibia, or the Atacama on a three-week Kalmar adventure blasting these same cars through the dirt on big knobbies. But more importantly, how to bring RS-R #0 home with me, short of outright theft or the hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of development that Kalmar put into the build? I figure the closest thing anywhere near a budgetary possibility involves a 996 Turbo, lifted on an Elephant Racing suspension setup, a little tune, a little roll cage, some lightweighting efforts.

Then again, the glory of the little 964 with probably around 15 percent less mass to swing around—and originally engineered to drive on such narrow, spiky pizza cutter tires. But then again, again, the reliability of a more modern Mezger water-cooled engine—in fact, Hopkins had blown the engine on Kalmar’s own non-Mezger 996 just before my arrival (luckily Kalmar’s crew on site can fix almost anything on any Porsche). Also the prospect of just about doubling the power, all-wheel-drive which I might need to remove, real air conditioning that actually works in the 21st century.

Somewhere perfectly bridging the generational gap between 964-based RS-R and 992 GT3-based 9X9…. Daydreaming, the windmills in my mind winding down. Reliving each moment in memory, an escapist day far enough removed from the real world to serve as a serious reset, even as I promised myself that despite the modern horror, I will one day revive the dream into reality and recreate this peak reference point of raw driving again.