The Safari Porsche Now Gets Built at a Secret Family Facility in Houston
In a Houston shop, a father and son are turning water-cooled 911s into dirt-slinging rally machines, and building a community around driving them hard instead of babying them.
The cannon cracked, serving as the green flag and sending a thick cloud of white smoke drifting across the dirt against the grey Texas sky. The moment it fired, two water-cooled flat-sixes barked and a pair of Napoleon Motorsports 996s, each one a bespoke rally build, launched off the line, dumping clutch into the loose earth and charging straight into the haze. Joe Napoleon was at the wheel of the black car, and his son Justin ran side by side in the silver one.
The rear tires bit, hooked up with a hard shudder, and threw a wall of dirt across the line. Holding my camera steady from the passenger seat, looking past the cluster of rally-light pods bolted to the hood as Joe matted the throttle, all I could do was laugh at the madness of it.
Joe worked the wheel and the manual shifter with quick, muscular focus, grinning the whole time.
He pitched us into the first sweeping bend sideways, caught the drift with effortless countersteer, and lined up the jump ahead. Joe stayed pinned over the crest, sending the black 996 airborne for a long second before it landed with a planted thud. Dirt clods hammered the aluminum skid plates underneath, and the long-travel suspension soaked up the hit like it was nothing.
I was ten years old again. There is a visceral, addictive thrill in watching a Porsche get driven this hard and flown through the air, and that grin didn’t leave my face the rest of the day.
PERSPECTIVE
THE CASE FOR THE 996
For years, elitists wrote off the 996 as the “budget 911,” the egg-eyed outcast that didn’t count. That’s flipping fast; values are climbing, and the water-cooled cars are finally getting their due, but land one four wheels off the ground on a dirt rally loop, a spare strapped to the roof and an unbaffled center exhaust roaring out the back bumper, and nobody in that passenger seat gives a single damn about collector values or resale.
Land one four wheels off the ground on a dirt rally loop, and nobody in that passenger seat gives a single damn about collector values or resale.
THE BUILD
HOW THE BUILDS COME TOGETHER
Through partnerships with both Elephant Racing and Safari Projek, Napoleon Motorsports can build a bespoke safari 911 to suit just about any need or vision. The black car is the Heritage RX, Heritage for the rally roots it pays homage to and RX for rallycross capability. The silver car is the Safari RS, a stage-one entry build on a full Elephant Racing kit, the RS marking that everything on it can be returned to stock if the owner ever wants the 911 back.
Napoleon Motorsports can build to whatever an owner has in mind, from a stripped rallycross machine to a fully reversible weekend car. As the North American distributor and fabricator for Safari Projek, with Elephant Racing parts on hand too, the shop isn’t tied to one recipe.
What used to mean ocean freight, customs paperwork, and months of waiting now gets built right here in Houston.
VALUE
THE MONEY MATH
The math is where it gets interesting, because the 996 starts life far cheaper than the air-cooled cars everyone else converts. Napoleon Motorsports builds on the 996 Carrera 4S for the wide Turbo-look body and its beefier underpinnings, then converts it to rear-wheel drive, though the shop can keep all-wheel drive when the mission calls for it. From there, the car gets long-travel suspension, heavy underbody armor from nose to tail, arches clearanced for chunky Nitto Terra Grappler G3 all-terrains, and the ride height to clear tabletop jumps and push through mud-slicked woods.
A clean 996 Carrera 4S manual coupe averages around $40,000 on today’s market, while a driver-grade 964 runs closer to $90,000 and the all-wheel-drive Carrera 4 pushes past $100,000. Those 996 numbers won’t hold, though, because the water-cooled cars are climbing quickly, and the smart money gets in and gets building before the window closes. Every Napoleon Motorsports build is shaped around what the owner wants, so final pricing swings with the options, but starting on a car that costs less to get into already puts you ahead.
THE PHILOSOPHY
DRIVE, DON’T SPECTATE
Napoleon Motorsports wanted owners driving, not spectating. They fired up a giant offset smoker, turned the course and the tree-lined trails over to the friends and media who came out, and let the day run on shared food and shared laps. A broad spectrum of cars staged at the line. Lifted Cayenne haulers and a widebody 944 rally build caught air over the jumps. Even a pair of 911 Dakars, Porsche’s own factory nod to how far off the beaten path a 911 will happily go, picked their way through mud ruts, thick brush, and palmetto fronds in the woods.
While plenty of the Porsche world spends its weekends dodging rock chips and babying concours paint, this crowd came to drive. Drivers pulled back into the paddock with mud caked across the Porsche crests, laughing and demanding to know when they could go again.
There are no velvet ropes here, no white-glove events, no trailer queens. Napoleon Motorsports would rather pass the keys around, catch some air, and share the fun.
WHAT’S NEXT
THE BIGGER VISION
Joe is the frontman, but Justin is every bit as deep in it, backed by the rest of the family and a crew of trusted, talented people. The Napoleons spent years in off-road and circuit racing before Porsche pulled them in, and it shows in the details. Someone who has actually broken parts miles out on a trail makes different decisions about gussets and suspension travel than someone staring at a computer model. But there’s a bigger idea underneath it, and Justin got into it while I drove his own off-road Cayenne through the trees.
The dream is a group of people who love to get out and drive their cars and go have fun, but in an environment where our kids and wives can come and enjoy it, too. So many times they go to a track or a parking lot and it’s boring for them. We wanted an environment where we can actually use our cars and the whole family enjoys it.
Justin Napoleon
The way he put it, the most important part is community and destination, not specs and products and build sheets.
The program won’t stay confined to a single dirt loop for long.
I envision a rally of these cool, eccentric off-road Porsches doing a multi-day tour across Texas ranches. Progress through different ranches and bring it back here for a grand finale with barbecue and family.
Justin Napoleon
The vision points at a growing network of like-minded ranches, each one a stop on a run built around the drive and the people rather than a stopwatch.
Two cars are tearing up the dirt now, with a queue of customer chassis behind them, and the fastest way to understand any of it is to ride shotgun around the track. The cars are the thrill, no question. But what Napoleon Motorsports is really building is bigger than any one of them, a vision where a Porsche gets driven hard, and nobody winces, where the kids and the spouses come along, and where you leave with a day you’ll remember long after the dust settles.
I climbed out already wanting back in, and looking around the paddock at the mud and the grins, I wasn’t the only one with a permagrin. Napoleon Motorsports is building cars, but more importantly, memories. I can’t wait for the next chapter in their book.
Napoleon Motorsports is based in Houston, Texas. Find them on Instagram at @napoleon_motorsports.
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