Flat out in the Marc Philipp Gemballa Marsien: a RUF-tuned 911 like no other

We've literally run out of road. There we were, happily surfing a wave of torque provided by a RUF tuned Porsche flat six, the tea kettle boil of boost causing the car to squirm very slightly on upshifts on the hot tarmac, each tiny snatch of silence between gears like the pause before someone reveals a secret. The air is filled with the howl of an Akrapovič titanium exhaust and sparkling grains of sand are siphoned from the road surface by the car’s passing. Glorious.

But very suddenly there’s a lot of braking and the chunky tyres are groaning under the effort of managing traction the other way. It’s not a gentle wash of windblown sand that’s veiled the road, but a blunt downing of tools and a half metre drop into dune from the highway. It’s like the desert bit it off, a termination likely to end in a face full of airbag. For most sports cars, this would be the end.

For the Marc Philipp Gemballa Marsien, it’s only the beginning. Mainly because at the touch of a button, the Marsien climbs its own suspension to rise from 120mm to 250mm of ground clearance. Nothing to an SUV, a generous amount for a car that looks like a modernised take on a 959 crossed with a GT series car. Which it kind of is.

Photography: Mark Riccioni

And yet... not. The Marsien is billed as an “adventure sports car”, inspired by Paris-Dakar cars from back in the day. Originally designed by Alan Derosier, he of the Porsche 908/04 concept, it is the first car from Marc Philipp Gemballa, the second generation of a very famous name in Porsche modifying. Marc is the son of Uwe Gemballa, who started the original company, but that corporate entity is now owned elsewhere, hence the careful designation of Marc’s separate enterprise. The Marsien – the French word for martian – is the first car in what feels like a beautiful rebirth from that next generation of human, and was developed in the UAE’s red sands, which look a little like Mars. And it’s not a restomod or a tuner car, but a limited series production of 40 vehicles.

This one is based on the bones of a contemporary Porsche Turbo S, with a body made entirely of carbon fibre by a company that supplies five different F1 teams. Every panel changed. The engine is re-engineered by legendary tuner RUF into either 750bhp/686lb ft as standard, or 830bhp as an option, the adjustable suspension is by KW Automotive, though there is a fixed, rally style suspension option by Rieger with a fixed ride height. There’s a completely redesigned new double wishbone suspension system with entirely different kinematics, articulation, driveshafts, the lot.

Even the wheelarches are reshaped, the intercoolers moved, the modified driveshafts converted to house Cayenne knuckles for more flexibility. There’s a front mounted radiator (beneath that duct in the nose), completely flat aluminium underbody armour and that bespoke Akrapovič exhaust. Even the wing mirrors that ape the RSR cars are bespoke, as are the doorhandles, and there’s an onboard plumbed-in tyre compressor system under the front decklid. The list goes on, each piece TÜV approved – and the German authorities are no joke. This is no mere bodykit.

Still, it’s a car that needs to be seen out in the world. It’s got that sense of purpose that means it’s more fascinating than purely beautiful, the author of its own little bubble of street presence. Not the gaudy tracksuit of the modern mid engined supercar, or the visual Teflon of a modern restomod, but something else. It doesn’t look like a tuner car, not ‘modified’. There are obviously hints of 959 in the rear spoiler, with even vague gestures of the 935 Moby Dick at the rear, where it looks like the Marsien ate a 992 911. All of which are good things. But it gets better when you check the fit and finish, start poking around the car with a critical eye, and realise that the Marsien is, in lots of ways, better finished than most OEM cars.

As for the interior, there’s a feeling of a less is more approach. It’s very Porsche – and none the worse for that, Porsche having possibly the most ergonomic and logical interiors in the world. And the Marsien still has that sense of build quality that’s akin to a well polished hardwood floor. Yes, there’s a raised centre console inspired by the Carrera GT and some nicely tinted carbon (including the roll cage, which can be replaced by rear seats, should you prefer), plus GT series fabric doorhandles and a few logos, but it’s a sensible and stylish rework rather than an apocalypse of skittish veneer and questionable fabrics.

The proof, however, is in the driving. You can be as tasteful as you like, but if it can’t perform, then it’s all pointless. Porsche already cooks up this flavour of 911 with the Dakar, so the benchmark is high. But to lead with the good bit, the Marsien delivers a unique experience both on road and off. And with a character all of its own.

On the road, it feels like a Turbo S with marginal extra shove. The turbos in this car are not of the slow burning fuse variety, but go from dormant to vicious whistle in surprisingly few rpm. The ‘standard’ specification comes with a RUF engineered 750bhp variant of the standard 3.8-litre twin turbo Porsche Turbo S flat six, the option package some 830bhp. This is enough, Marc Gemballa’s attitude that the relentless quest for ever higher horsepower numbers is a rather pointless game. A car must be fast and responsive, yes. But respectable is enough. After just a few in-gear pulls, you realise the Marsien is more than respectable, but the Turbo S is already a very fast car, so it walks a line between being a bit of a handful and silly. But to be honest, it’s incredibly comfy in road mode, dribbled around with minimum fuss. You could genuinely daily this.

Of course, in the desert, there are no roads. A place where maps change like they’re alive, where geography gets itchy feet and wanders around like it has a heartbeat, ignoring the slow progress of mountains. But in a car like this, the whole place becomes one endless directional possibility. Just point and shoot. Jink left and you go almost 45° up a molten dune, right and you surf a dusty golden wave to the bottom of a shallow gorge. Head straight and you’ll end up on either flat sand plains or rolling breakers of desert road that test the suspension to the limits of travel in both directions. At no point does the Marsien struggle.

Yes, it’s still a sports car – lob it at too sharp an angle and you’ll be using the front splitter as a shovel – land it too hard and you’ll find the bump stops eventually, but the capability is deeply impressive. The best bit is that the car doesn’t chew through the landscape like an off roader, but rather skitters across it like an insect, glomming the surface tension together to skate on the surface, rather than dig under it.

This, of course, is a tough environment in which to manage traction, simply because the sand can’t really decide what kind of sand it wants to be. Some bits are packed and solid, some parts glittery and slick, some like wading in talcum powder. Grip is likely – if not guaranteed – to be different at each corner, and it’s a testament to Porsche’s traction management that the Marsien doesn’t just pirouette in increasingly meaningless circles. Porsche does good work, even if the Marsien has very different code.

In fact, your brain starts to clot over with the ease of it, and you get more and more stupid. It’s probably worth mentioning here that there was a very slight issue with the traction control system on the blue car we drove, where a certain set of values were slightly wonky, meaning that the traction control system wouldn’t switch entirely off, something that couldn’t be fixed in the desert. Happily, MPG also brought along another Marsien with completely disabled traction systems, and the combination of Porsche all wheel drive and light weight – the Marsien weighs the same as a normal Turbo S – gave us all the dynamic impressions we needed.

He’s assembled The Avengers of parts supply and engineering to produce a car that’s one hell of a debut

This is a performance car that acts more like a desert buggy off road, charging about with abandon. Yes, we got it stuck, but only once, and that was more operator error than anything else. And yes, the fat all terrain tyres scythe some of the precision from road driving, but luckily, customers get street and off road tyres (mounted on their own forged centre lock wheels) thrown in as standard, and on street rubber, you’re looking at 0–62mph in 2.6 seconds and a 208mph top speed. More than anything else, it’s like a rallycross car that’s grown up and started to pay attention to how it dresses.

We spent a couple of days playing with both the production Marsien and the prototype, and the team behind it. And there’s a lot to like. Marc Gemballa is a young CEO at 31 – young, passionate and thoughtful, as well as having an eye for detail, and his own personal history, that’ll make for cars with a story and heritage. But more than that, he’s assembled The Avengers of parts supply and engineering to produce a car that’s one hell of a debut.

And the cost of all this? Well, a Marsien requires a Porsche 911 Turbo S (£168k brand new) and €500,000 (£414k at current exchange rates). Which means an all in price of very roughly £582,000. There’s obviously lots of headroom in the options catalogue, but in a world of multimillion pound restomods, for a limited series production car (a 911 Dakar is £173k in a run of 2,500), that seems like conspicuous relative value. There’s just one problem though – at least 40 rich people have thought so too and the Marsien is already sold out, closeted in whichever personal Area 51 houses these things. But there’s more to come from Marc Gemballa’s outfit, and if this Martian is anything to go by, we should welcome an invasion.