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Porsche Revives The Classic Targa Florio Race For The ‘GTS Experience’

The Targa Florio endurance race in Sicily has a history stretching back more than 100 years, to when Vincenzo Florio first founded the 148-km event in 1906. The route shrank to 72 km in 1951, just years before the race became part of the World Sportscar Championship, and was later folded in 1977.

But within that time frame, Porsche managed an impressive 11 overall victories at the Targa Florio endurance race. One can even find evidence of the marque’s love for the Sicilian motorsport event to this day, in the naming of the Porsche 911 Targa.

So, given that the automaker has so much history there, it should come as no surprise that the former Targa Florio race route presented the perfect staging for Porsche’s “GTS Experience” event, wherein they asked journalists to come and drive some contemporary GTS-badged Porsche sportscars on the road course. The GTS badge, which stands for “Gran Turismo Sport,” implies a marriage of power, reliability, and speed – hallmarks of what is required of an endurance race-winning model.

And exactly the attributes managed by the Porsche 904 GTS when it won the famous Targa Florio back in 1964.

Aaron Birch is an automotive enthusiast and writer/filmmaker from Detroit, MI. As a rule, he only buys cars older than himself.

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