Watch a Porsche 917 Replica on Studded Tires Drift in the Snow

For most, a carbon fiber replica of a Porsche 917k race car is only a summer car. Some people, though, are slightly more daring. The sort of person who spends nearly a decade of their life building a carbon fiber replica of a Porsche 917k in Norway also happens to be the sort of person willing to drive it on studded tires in the snow. This is how you get a recreation of a classic race car sliding around in a storm with a lit Christmas tree over its engine bay.

The clip is from Instagram user 917cfk, who claims to have spent seven years building the car from three original body molds. The resulting replica is powered by a 3.3-liter turbocharged flat-six rather than the flat-12 from the original racer, but it is a running, driving creation. That means it still has all the visual impact of a 917, but it's not too precious to take out in the driving snow for a few slides behind a camera car.

If you are wondering how the 917 replica's owner found snow tires wide enough to fit the rear wheels of an early-Seventies race car, the trick is in the rims. With specially built dual rims, the owner was able to fit a dual set of studded rally tires to the car for ice and snow use. That allows the car to execute massive snow drifts with surprising control. That means it can get a Christmas tree from point A to point B, but it still might not be the ideal tool for either tree transportation or ice racing.

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