It began with an unusual question: What happens when you turn a Porsche 928S—a V8 grand tourer built to devour autobahns—into a surf vehicle? Not a beach cruiser. Not a prop for the dunes. A go-anywhere, tide-chasing machine—complete with rally-spec gearbox internals and a winch bolted to the front bumper.
Tadeusz Elwart operates Chalupy 6, a storied campsite on the Hel Peninsula in northern Poland. The peninsula is essentially a thin sandbar—a sliver of Baltic coastline where you can stand at its center and see both shores. His father ran the site before him and sparked Tadeusz’s passion for Porsche. When you grow up with the sea on both sides and various Porsche 911s cycling through the family garage, ideas that would seem absurd to others begin to seem perfectly logical.
The 928 concept materialized during a conversation with his friend Patryk Mikiciuk, an automotive journalist who shares a similarly loose definition of the word “reasonable.” While alcohol likely played a role, both men agreed that a Porsche-based surf car was a necessity—something they could blast up the shoreline to chase the swell. But it had to be something unique.
Plenty of enthusiasts have modified the 911 for off-road duty; Porsche famously led the way with the Dakar-winning Carrera in 1984. Moreover, the cost of a donor 911 was becoming prohibitive. The transaxle 924 and 944 have also seen their share of “safari” builds; in fact, a colleague had recently prepared a 924 for the Classic Dakar. That car is well-known in the right circles, and Tadeusz didn’t want a replica. They needed a fresh canvas. Naturally, the 928 sprang to mind.
Unsure if they were geniuses or madmen, they called that Dakar racer, Tomasz Staniszewski, for a second opinion. His professional assessment of the 928 as a safari platform was blunt: “Don’t do it!” His reasoning was practical. For the 924 and 944, a blueprint for rugged modification already exists. If a suspension or drivetrain issue arises on a safari 944, someone else has likely already solved it.
The 928 was a different story. Practically every modification would be a prototype; no one else had been daring enough to try quite what the friends had in mind. However, as is often the case with the timeless lines of the 928, the more Tadeusz and Mikiciuk stared at it, the more they loved it. Undeterred, they pushed forward with the “Surfari” plan.
Accommodating the big off-road rubber required some serious bodywork.
The pair located a solid donor 1980 928S, brought it back to Hel, and installed big tires. The BFGoodrich 215/75R15s provided the stance they wanted. But they discovered an issue that needed to become priority one: the gearbox. “The standard ratios are too long for large off-road wheels,” Tadeusz explains. “Every time the terrain got interesting, you’d be stuck in the wrong part of the power band.”
The experienced Staniszewski eventually agreed to help solve that problem. He built a specialized transmission featuring dog-box engagement for first through third gears and standard road ratios for fourth and fifth. “In practice,” says Tadeusz, “the bottom half of the gearbox is loud, mechanical, and aggressive—every shift lands like a punch. The top half smooths out so you don’t shake your kidneys loose on the highway. It’s two personalities in one casing. It works. Mostly.”
Predictably, the standard 928S suspension was never going to survive the abuse the friends intended. Because this was a bespoke build, parts couldn’t be ordered from a catalog. Virtually everything had to be engineered from scratch.
The dampers and springs were designed by Samczuk Racing Service, a specialized workshop in central Poland. The car was sent there for on-site fabrication of mounting points and fine-tuning. The oil reservoir lines were routed with enough clearance that future maintenance wouldn’t require a total teardown.
Custom wishbones were the next priority. In their standard form, the arms can contact the springs when the car is fully unweighted—a common occurrence on rough terrain. Tadeusz is currently designing his own adjustable control arms to allow tuning in every plane, with a redesigned travel range specifically for off-road articulation. As he was warned, nothing about this project is simple.
Cooling is now managed by high-output electric fans, the original viscous clutch having been discarded. The standard alternator couldn’t handle the combined draw of the ECU, electronic injectors, auxiliary lighting, and the winch, so a higher-output 944 Turbo unit was fitted with a custom CNC-machined pulley. The winch is a functional necessity; since no one has likely ever driven a 928 in conditions quite this extreme, the “Hel Riders” are still discovering the limits of its capability in deep sand.
Inside, the interior remains mostly stock. Tadeusz likes the leather and “Pascha” checkerboard fabric combination and sees it as one of the bright points of Porsche design in the 1980s. While the factory materials mostly remain, they added subtle signature touches: yellow seatbelts and custom window nets made from wide yellow webbing snapped into the door frames. A vintage TAG Heuer rally timer, sourced from the collection of CarBone founder Pawel Kalinowski, sits prominently on the dashboard.
Outside, the custom-made roof rack is a clever piece of engineering in its own right. The rear mounts integrate with the hatch lid, allowing the structure to pivot so the trunk remains fully accessible. The rack features laser-cut “Surfari” logos. There’s also a neoprene bag mounted to the rear window for wet gear. You clip in your wetsuit, drive, and the airflow dries the bag’s contents.
While this machine proved to be functional, its driveshafts turned out to be the weakest link. The factory half-shafts were never designed to handle rough trails or oversized off-road tires. And during full suspension droop, the joints operate at angles they were never engineered to withstand. Tadeusz knows the shafts are on borrowed time. He is currently exploring beefed-up, motorsport-grade replacements.
To manage the visual identity, Tadeusz enlisted Lange & Lange, twin brothers and longtime members of the Chalupy 6 community. Their portfolio includes surfboards ridden by three-time World Surf League champion Gabriel Medina. They oversaw the livery, stripes, and interior accents. A vintage F.A. Porsche Design helmet was sourced to complete the aesthetic. Even the roof-mounted surfboard is bespoke, shaped by Jedrzej at Polvo Surfboards specifically for Baltic conditions. That means it is wider, with a unique rocker designed for the short, cold waves of the North.
The 928 Surfari’s public debut occurred not on the sand, but on the snow. Tadeusz took the car to the 2026 Fat Ice Race in Austria in February, where it was used to tow Wojtek Pawlusiak—one of Europe’s premier snowboarders—across a frozen lake. A Polish-built beach Porsche with a rally gearbox—howling across the Austrian Alps. It was a brilliant success—right up until the gearbox finally succumbed to the strain.
Today, this wild transaxle creation is undergoing a rebuild from the ground up. This time, it’s being engineered with the benefit of hindsight—not just to survive the idea, but to fulfill it: a 928 that can chase waves as relentlessly as it once chased horizons.
