Well, isn’t this just the most heartwarming story. To celebrate Walter Röhrl’s 74th birthday recently, Porsche surprised the great man with his 924 Carrera GTS rally car, which the folk at the historic motorsport department in Weissach had meticulously restored.

What a thing. It looks resplendent in that glorious gold and black Monnet livery, doesn’t it?

Röhrl and his co-driver Christian Geistdörfer piloted the 924 GTS in the German Rally Championship back in 1981 – it was to be the only rally season in which Röhrl would compete for Porsche. The pair took four victories before rather famously moving to Opel the following year.

The 924 was then passed to Jacky Ickx, who made one outing in it at the Boucles de Spa Rally in February 1982 before it was returned to its Monnet livery and handed over to the Porsche museum.

This particular GTS actually started life as one of the nine prototypes that Porsche built, and as such its 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo engine was never given a serial number.

Despite the fact it was a prototype (and that it had almost 10,500km of rallying on the clock, and that it’d been sat for almost 40 years) the engine and connected KKK 26 turbocharger were inspected and found to be in tip top condition.

The restoration then involved rebuilding a number of parts and replacing others, but the focus was always to keep the GTS Rally’s patina and original rallying features.

Top work, Porsche.

STORY Greg Potts