Yes, GEMBALLA GmbH is still around and tuning cars, especially Porsches, but they have somewhat lost their shine with Porsche owners in the last few years. This specialist tuning house is a German based tuner with over 36 years of experience in refining and individualization of Porsche and McLaren sports cars.
Founder of well known German tuning firm Gemballa Automobiletechnik, Uwe Gemballa was found dead in October 2010 in South Africa.
The car that made GEMBALLA world famous and also famous in Malaysia was the 1983 911 conversion where it was GEMBALLA’s idea of retrofitting flat noses to the front of Porsche 911′s to reduce aerodynamic drag, all the while retaining enough downforce to save the car from becoming too light at the front-end.
The front nose look came into its own in the early 80′s, as tuners and racers alike saw the benefits a sloping front nose would bring to the already ever-popular 911 chassis.
GEMBALLA has been giving the Porsche 911 the Avalanche treatment since 1985 with the launch of the 930-based model. Fast forward to present day, the aftermarket specialists based near Stuttgart in Leonberg have worked on the 991 Turbo.
GEMBALLA extracted a monstrous 820 horsepower and 950 Newton-meters of torque from the 3.8-liter six-cylinder biturbo unit, thus making it a whopping 280hp and 290Nm stronger than the stock engine. In order to achieve these staggering output numbers, you can imagine the engineers had to make some substantial changes. From new turbochargers and bespoke intake manifolds to a high-performance air filter and tweaked cylinder heads, the engine has been thoroughly upgraded. Not only that, but the gearbox also had to be adapted to cope with the added muscle.
Today a GEMBALLA tuned sports car is rare and even harder to find than before.
