tangent lifts porsche 911 three inches for a chicago-built urban safari
TANGENT TAKES THE 911 OFF SCRIPT
A 992-generation Porsche 911 looks unusual sitting this high off the ground. Tangent Design Group’s Urban Safari lifts the Carrera 4 by three inches, puts it on chunky tires, adds a bull bar up front and straps recovery gear to the roof. The proportions are familiar enough to register as a 911 straight away, but everything around them has shifted.
The Chicago-based industrial design studio began the project in 2019, after finishing another 911 commission and deciding to build one for itself. A 2021 Carrera 4 became the base. Tangent wanted all-wheel drive, ordered the car in Paint-to-Sample Black Olive, and started figuring out how far the standard 992 could be pushed without turning it into a caricature of a rally car.
images courtesy Motive Archive
FIRST, THEY SCANNED THE CAR
A lot of the work started with the actual Porsche sitting inside the studio. Tangent removed sections of the body and 3D-scanned the bumpers, fenders, wheel wells and rocker areas, then brought that geometry into CAD. From there, the team began drawing the pieces that would eventually change the car most visibly, including the widened arches, front bar and ducktail at the rear.
The process stayed very physical. Full-size parts came off Tangent’s large-format 3D printer so the designers could bolt them onto the car, stand back and see whether they worked. Even the wheel designs were printed at full scale on paper and held beside the 911 before the final forged aluminum versions were produced with Brixton Forged. It is a wonderfully old-fashioned way of judging proportion, tucked inside a very digital workflow.
Tangent Design Group transforms a 2021 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 into its Urban Safari
THE THREE-INCH LIFT DOES MOST OF THE WORK
The biggest change is also the simplest to spot. Tangent developed a custom three-inch lift that keeps the factory suspension in place while creating enough room for much larger off-road tires. On a car whose shape has spent decades sitting close to the asphalt, those extra inches change almost everything about the way the body reads.
The space around the wheels suddenly becomes part of the design. The arches feel bigger, the body looks narrower, and the familiar 911 silhouette seems to sit on top of its chassis in a way it usually never does. Tangent also had to make the lift work with the car’s electronics, which is where modifying a modern Porsche becomes considerably more involved than just fitting taller springs.
the 992 sits three inches higher on a custom lift developed by the Chicago studio
BLACK OLIVE, YELLOW GRAPHICS AND AN AXE
From there, Tangent let the car get a little weirder. The Black Olive paint can look green in one photograph and almost black in another, while yellow graphics run along the sides. Amber lights sit on the bull bar, and the roof rack carries recovery boards along with a Gerber axe. The axe might be the detail that gives the whole thing away. This is clearly a serious design exercise, but everyone involved seems to be having fun.
At the rear, Tangent added a full ducktail that gives the raised 992 a slightly older rally-car attitude. The studio had also ordered the donor car with a rear windshield wiper, another small detail that makes more sense once the 911 starts pretending it might spend time somewhere muddier than a Chicago street.
What makes the Urban Safari especially interesting is where it came from. Tangent works as an industrial design consultancy, so the car developed through the same mix of scanning, prototyping and full-scale testing that might go into a product or piece of transportation design. The 911 just happens to be an especially valuable object on which to experiment.
larger off-road tires sit on forged aluminum wheels designed specifically for the project
Paint-to-Sample Black Olive shifts between deep green and near-black across the body
the roof rack holds recovery equipment along with a Gerber axe
Tangent 3D-scanned the production 911 before developing its custom components in CAD
a full ducktail and rally-inspired graphics complete the Urban Safari’s altered silhouette
project info:
name: Tangent Urban Safari 911
designer: Tangent Design Group | @tangent_design_group
location: Chicago, Illinois, USA
base vehicle: 2021 Porsche 911 Carrera 4, 992 generation
photography: courtesy Motive Archive | @motive_archive
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