Earlier this year, Marc Philipp Gemballa and RUF announced an upcoming safari-style supercar — ‘Project Sandbox’ — inspired by the legendary Porsche 959. At the time, the details were admittedly pretty lacking. However, given the former’s relationship to the late Uwe Gemballa and the latter’s long history of building high-performance Porsches, needless to say — we were pretty excited.
And now it’s finally arrived. Dubbed ‘MARSIEN’ (French for martian), it’s essentially a lifted AWD 911 Turbo S engineered for maximum off-road capability. As such, it dons a full carbon fiber body designed by Alan Derosier and optimized for aerodynamic efficiency by KLK. What’s more, it rides on a bespoke suspension setup from KW Automotive, with double wishbones up front, multi-link struts at the rear, adaptive dampers, and a hydraulic lift that can raise ground clearance as high as 9.8 inches. Powered by a RUF-tuned twin-turbo flat-six, it makes some 740hp in its standard guise and up to 830hp and 685lb-ft of torque with some additional ECU remapping. When mated to an eight-speed PDK gearbox and dressed in on-road rubber, that’s enough to take it 62mph in just 2.6s before topping out at 205mph. Shipping with two sets of wheels and tires, you can order one for yourself starting at €495,000 (~$585,500).
