How Porsche put a 911 on a volcano

Edith is a heavily modified Porsche 911, perhaps the slowest factory-built 911 of the last half century, as speed (at least on asphalt) is clearly not its mission. And you might be surprised to learn that it has nothing to do with the 911 Dakar, although it is clearly optimized for off-road driving.

So why this 911? Porsche built the car with a specific record in mind that had nothing to do with lap times or outdoing other drivers. All the engineering that went into Edith was to go faster than any other earthbound vehicle in history, a goal Porsche achieved late last year. Now a documentary about the journey is about to premiere.

Porsche hasn’t really made a secret of this project. At the end of 2022, they were already in the middle of testing Edith and advertised their efforts with a video about the project:

(Editor’s note: We wrote about this volcano trip almost two years ago. But thanks to the new documentary about it, this trip is now making the rounds again.)

Where can you go higher than any vehicle before? Chile’s Ojos del Salado, the world’s highest active volcano, was just the place. Peaking at 22,615 feet (6,893 m), the top of Ojos del Salado is a good mile above Colorado’s highest point (that’s Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet, in case you were wondering), and even the elevation of Mount Everest’s base camp (17,598 feet) is lower than the height Porsche was aiming for.

Of course (Boromir voice) You don’t just drive to the top of the Ojos del Salado, at least not on a road, although you can actually go pretty high on the road, as Lamborghini will happily tell you. The brand drove an Urus up the highest motorable road in the world, the Umling La Pass in Ladakh, India. Driving up the Umling La at 5,798 m (19,024 feet) was enough reason for Lamborghini to get mad and publish an entire story about how it accomplished this “unimaginable task.”

The fact that a Porsche would drive a 911 around 3,000 feet higher and without a road is actually unimaginable and objectively far more impressive – especially when you consider that the record that Porsche had to break was set in 2020 by two Mercedes Unimogs and the dedicated off-road vehicles climbed to 21,961 feet.

However, that is exactly what Porsche did with Edith and will now release its documentary about this achievement. The film is a collaboration between TangentVector and Porsche of North America and shows the four-year project from start to finish. It is called Edith: Climbing a volcano.

Driven by Romain Dumas, the team accomplished the feat on December 2, the ideal time of year for it. According to MeteoBlue, December is the start of the warmest season, while precipitation is at one of its lowest levels.

That doesn’t mean it was entirely comfortable, though. Temperatures at the summit often drop well below freezing and the air is so thin that using supplemental oxygen is common practice.

How exactly the six-cylinder boxer engine in the rear of the Porsche was able to get the oxygen it needed to keep going is something we will certainly find out in the film. We know a few things about Edith, including that she runs on E-Fuel and was originally a standard 992 Carrera 4S. According to Motor trendThe Porsche team actually tested the engine in a light aircraft at high altitude. Hopefully this test will be featured in the documentary. Porsche also used a second 911 called Doris with similar, if less extreme, modifications as a support vehicle.

Those interested can grab general admission tickets to the show here. In fact, they’re pretty cheap ($31.84 including fees) considering it’s an official Porsche event. You might end up chatting to some key executives. Maybe Lamborghini executives will be in the building and can learn something! The show kicks off at 6:00 p.m. on August 16. Grab some seats and let us know what you think!