If you can bear it, turn your mental clock back to the doldrums of the 2020 pandemic. With practically all organized gatherings halted, people turned to all sorts of alternatives. But rather than get super deep into sourdough bread baking, one British rally team dove head-first into the world of high-dollar restomods. The result is the Fifteen Eleven Design 914: a lightweight sports car with Porsche-inspired design, carbon-fiber body panels, a reinforced chassis, and 987-generation Cayman running gear. In a landscape saturated with Porsche restomods, this one flies a flag all its own.
Well sure, you might be thinking, a vintage-funhouse-mirror Boxster fever dream is sure to be unique. And in some ways that’s what this is, albeit executed in much better taste. Only the A-pillar, bulkhead, and floors remain from the donor Porsche, but the final product is unmistakable as a 914. This despite the wider footprint, redesigned front and rear bumpers for improved cooling, 18-inch Fuchs wheels, and petite ducktail spoiler. The car’s filled-out stance and harmonious lines lend it gravitas without need for garish add-ons.
That said, it doesn’t blend in. The 914 is striking in traffic—low, sleek, and sporting a downright quirky face. In that respect, it’s much like the classic 1970s car, though in this case, LEDs are cleverly integrated into the soft-touch rubber front bumper in place of the vintage pop-ups.
And much like the original 914, whose friendly and ergonomic cockpit belies its quirky exterior, the theme here is impeccable balance in pursuit of pure driving enjoyment. “We’re believers in ‘less is more’,” says Fifteen Eleven co-founder Chris Mellors.
Fifteen Eleven Design is a division of England’s Mellors Elliot Motorsport. Founder (and seasoned rally driver) Chris Mellors developed the car along with his two sons, Ben and Oliver, and their skilled team in Derbyshire, U.K. In addition to winning the World Rally Championship in 2002, placing second in 2012, and offering rally prep services, Mellors Elliot has made a side hustle out of restoring classic cars and setting up vintage race cars. The 914 is the second restomod they’ve attempted, but the first that Fifteen Eleven is offering as a repeatable exercise for the general public. (The outfit’s debut project, a one-off, is a batty Ford Escort convertible with a 320-hp Duratec V-6.)
“Because engine output is highly regulated for balance of power, a rally team’s edge comes from a combination of suspension setup, driver ability, and driver comfort,” Ben Mellors told us from the passenger seat of the 914. “Millimeter changes in the steering wheel position matter when you’re doing 6-8 stages a day.”
He brings up this point because Fifteen Eleven invested similar time and expertise into dialing in the 914’s every detail—seating height, sightlines, gauges, steering and brake feel, throttle mapping, and so on. The goal was to create a classic sports car experience with modern performance and comfort made possible by today’s motorsport technology. The ABS system, for example, is a £10,000 racing-type unit that, in emergency situations, applies brake pressure to the wheels with traction, rather than the wheels that may be locking up.
“We wanted to build a car that doesn’t beat you up. Something that people would drive and not just park in their garage,” Ben said, shouting over the wind and controlled wail from the flat-six’s stainless steel exhaust. Our feedback from our 90 minutes of slicing through wooded Connecticut back roads in Fifteen Eleven’s car: Job done. This 914 combines the refinement and comfort of a modern Porsche Cayman with the directness of a Lotus Evora.
The engine and six-speed transmission come from a 2006–2012 Cayman S, the former enlarged from its original 3.4 liters to either 3.8 or 4.0 liters, at the buyer’s discretion. The latter option makes a bit more torque and noise. In either case, the flat-six and its Life Racing ECU make 380 hp. The output more than triples that of the Porsche 914-6’s 125 hp (to say nothing of the lesser four-cylinders), despite the restomod weighing just 75 pounds more than the classic.
With so little mass to move around, even partial throttle launches the tach needle and sends 914 scampering toward the next corner. Eighty miles per hour feels insanely fast, especially with the top off. The car’s lightness—about 2150 pounds, compared to just under 3000 for the original 320-hp Cayman—plays a big role here. Response to every input is immediate, yet not frantic. The driver’s position so far forward enhances the sensation of being right on top of the road. To give an idea, there is no proper dead pedal—the driver’s left foot rests right on the wheel well. And thanks to a redesigned bulkhead, there is plenty of legroom. The seating position is low, and ingress and egress aren’t too bothersome. Your author is uncommonly short, but our head was a foot or so below the top of the A-pillar—neither emerging from the windshield like the green part of a carrot top nor sunken deep inside the cockpit, as in a bathtub.
Adding to the experience of speed is a beautiful bark from the exhaust (a butterfly valve opens to change tone and increase noise at 50% throttle). It’s loud enough that your neighbors will hear you, but not necessarily hate you. The interior is sparse though not exactly Spartan—hip-hugging Recaro seats lined in leather, houndstooth fabric trim, and a Porsche Classic head unit. As you’d expect for restomod of this sort, customers can fully option the car to their liking, with choices ranging from paint protection to an exposed fuel filler neck, interior leather (etched or woven), Alcantara, exposed carbon fiber, and plenty more.
The most common touchpoints are the AP Racing pedals, Momo steering wheel, and wood-knobbed shifter, all of which hit just the right notes. Pulling a little rocketship-logo-emblazoned knob on the dashboard unlocks the final 20 percent of power and changes the throttle to a more aggressive map. The added urgency kicks up the adrenaline factor but never veers into unwieldy territory.
The clutch takes a decent amount of foot pressure to work, but it’s not obnoxious and one adapts to it quickly. Steering: lively and sniper-precise. Aside from the heavy pressure needed to engage the reverse lockout, the gearbox proved friendly—light action, natural throws, and smooth entry into each gear. The wood shift knob is a nod to the Porsche 917 road car, while the rainbow motif matching Fifteen Eleven’s logo calls back to one of Chris Mellors’ old racing liveries.
Gripes are few and far between. There is a tendency for the car to buck under light throttle pressure in second gear, which can make it tricky to drive around with city where full commitment isn’t always practical. Brembo’s brakes are plenty powerful (four-piston fronts are standard, six-pistons are available), but the pedal could use a dose of additional bite at the very top of the travel. (Chris Mellor suspected this was an indication our test car might be in need of a brake bleed.) The targa top is light enough that one person can carry and latch it in place, but unlike the original Porsche 914, there is no place to stow it in the rear of the car.
The car’s suspension is also Cayman-derived, working alongside Reiger three-way coilovers and connected to stronger, reengineered pickup points on the chassis. Fifteen Eleven reinforced the whole shell with T45 tubular steel. The added structure is fixed primarily around the transmission housing, where engineers could also route major systems to save space.
Despite the changes, the 914 is designed to be fully serviceable at any Porsche dealership that could otherwise handle a 987-generation Cayman.
Despite the structure’s obvious stiffness, the motorsport-spec dampers serve up a pleasant ride. Information about the changing road surface is clearly communicated through the seat and steering wheel, and in high definition. That said, even Frisbee-sized potholes fail to punish occupants. It’s comfortable enough that Ben frequently drove his daughter to school in the original prototype, which naturally made her quite popular. (The Fifteen Eleven name is a reference to her birthday.)
Over big hills at speed, the 914 stays planted, settles naturally, and takes the next set without missing a beat. There is traction control, but no stability control. Turn-in is deliciously sharp, and there is a touch of body roll that tells you what the chassis is up to. About 45 minutes into the ride, we settle into an easy but nonetheless thrilling rhythm. That, Ben says, is where the 914 shines:
“The 911 is a car with the engine in the wrong place and with excellent engineering to fix that. And the old cars you had to drive right on the edge of it getting away from you. The 914 was always more balanced.”
Longtime fans of the 914 will surely relish Porsche’s mid-engine machine getting this kind of treatment. The car’s Volkswagen origins, unconventional styling, and lack of power made it a bit of an ugly duckling for many years in the Porsche world. That being said, the 914 has been climbing in value since mid-2018, with the rarer 914-6 surging the most. Best-in-the-world concours examples now command $165,000 on average, or $80,000 for most good driver-condition cars.
Fifteen Eleven’s 914 will cost a fair bit more. Its asking price is roughly £350,000, or about $480,000, depending on options. And that’s before the donor 914. No small sum, to be sure, but buyers can at least take comfort in the fact that Fifteen Eleven’s car feels wholly considered and carefully engineered. This is no mere design-driven exercise—the team’s rally prep and restoration experience shows.
If the 914 doesn’t do it for you, Fifteen Eleven has more in the pipeline. Our ears perked up at its next project—a rip-roaring Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX.
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