A modified Porsche 911 now holds the altitude report for a climb achieved by a wheeled car, after reaching the height of the west ridge of Chile’s Ojos del Salado, the world’s tallest volcano with a summit at 22,615 toes.

With racing driver Romain Dumas behind the wheel, the 911, which featured a raised chassis and ran on carbon-neutral e-fuel, on Dec. 2 reached a top of twenty-two,093 toes. That beats the earlier report of 21,961.94 toes, set in 2020 by a pair of Mercedes-Benz Unimog U 5023 off-road vehicles on the identical volcano.

Close to the summit, Dumas confronted excessive circumstances, together with air roughly half as dense as at sea degree, and temperatures as little as 12 levels F.

“I’ll always remember this expertise,” Dumas mentioned in a press release. “It was a unprecedented feeling to drive the place no automobile has gone earlier than.”

Modified Porsche 911 reaches 22,093 toes on Chile’s Ojos del Salado – Dec. 2023

Dumas beforehand tackled the volcano in 2022 in a apply run. The height of the west ridge is the one path accessible by a car, and the purpose the place he stopped on the report run was absolutely the peak of the ridge, that means the report shall be powerful to surpass. Dumas, with a assist staff and a second automobile readily available, set off at 3:30 am and completed at 3:58 p.m.

The e-fuel used for the run was a batch from the Porsche-backed pilot plant situated in Chile. The artificial gasoline is produced in a course of that makes use of electrical vitality generated by a wind turbine to kind hydrogen through electrolysis of water, primarily the reverse of what occurs in a hydrogen gasoline cell. The hydrogen is then mixed with CO2 captured from the air, in a synthesis course of that creates gasoline and liquefied gasoline.

The modified 911 relies on the 911 Carrera 4S. The automobile’s twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter flat-6 was fully inventory however paired with a 7-speed handbook transmission with decrease gear ratios than inventory to allow exact, mild throttle inputs at low pace.

Modified Porsche 911 reaches 22,093 toes on Chile’s Ojos del Salado – Dec. 2023

The important thing modification required for traversing the tough terrain had been portal axles, which along with chunky off-road tires elevated floor clearance to virtually 14 inches and required widened wheel arches to be fitted.

Porsche additionally put in a tool referred to as a Warp-Connecter. Tailored from motorsports, the machine permits fixed wheel masses even when the chassis experiences excessive actions, and because of this, it improves traction. Differential locks and a steer-by-wire system had been additionally added.

Whereas Porsche would not plan to place a 911 this rugged into manufacturing, the automaker final yr launched the limited-edition 911 Dakar providing much more off-road functionality than a inventory 911.