For sale: all the Singer 911 you'll ever need

Singer is mulling the idea of building its first 'ground-up' supercar. Here's one it made (much) earlier...

It was enlightening, on the first day of Festival of Speed, to hear Singer’s leadership team talk at length not just about its status as the Central Feature marque, but also its exalted position in the current ‘restomod’ market - a market it has arguably done more than anyone to elevate in scale and prominence. Rob Dickinson, who clearly dislikes the catch-all term, recognises that the company he founded back in 2009 now has many admirers (and almost as many imitators), but insists that it remains laser-focused on the quality and consistency of the product, as well as its ability to innovate.

In many ways, it is heartening to hear Singer’s Executive Chairman (and still chief dreamer, it seems), reiterate his dim view of the horsepower race for its own sake, and dismiss the on-paper speed of its individual cars as ‘not really the point’. No less charmingly, Dickinson couldn’t quite land on a definitive reason for devoting so much time and energy to a single weekend in West Sussex. Singer’s ties to the UK are prominent and long-standing, yet it remains headquartered in LA and does around 65 per cent of its business in the US. Additionally, its order book is full for the next four years. It hardly needs the publicity.

One suspects the company is in the happy position of being able to do whatever it wants, and at its own speed. Industry veteran Raj Nair was appointed last year as CEO, though Singer seems disinclined to grow its corporate footprint much beyond the point it is already at. Dickinson suggested that despite the introduction of the new Carrera Coupe and Cabriolet, which join the DLS Turbo, Classic Turbo, DLS and original Classic in the range, the firm still has ‘more ideas on the table than we can do’.

Nevertheless, its planning for the future has become emphatically longer-term in scope, and extends beyond the current offerings. So much so, that when pushed about its prospective aspirations, Dickinson conceded that ‘there is an ambition to do a ground-up new Singer’. Such a car would obviously break new ground for the firm in a number of ways - as well as, you’d imagine, unlock the kind of eye-watering prices that make even bespoke restoration look affordable. Dickinson admitted that its relationship with its client base, and their enthusiasm for the brand, provided it with ‘an unprecedented opportunity’ to use some of its established DNA to do something ‘special’.

It helps, of course, when your product is immune to anything as mundane as depreciation. More often than not, Singer says, its cars sell for more secondhand than they originally cost to commission. And not the passage of time, nor the number of examples being produced, seems to have much impact on demand. The Amazon Green Metallic, right-hand-drive 964 pictured, according to its MOT record at any rate, was converted to 400hp, 4.0-litre masterpiece a decade ago - only five years after Singer set up shop, in fact. Yet here it is, nearly 7,000 miles later, with a £925k sticker on its windscreen.

This despite not being everyone’s cup of tea. But Dickinson never set out to please every Porsche fan - that’s very much Porsche’s job. He still alludes to high-end watch ownership as the ideal Singer reference point - i.e. that by building someone a car of Rolex-like calibre, they might conceivably want to keep it in the garage forever. Obviously that isn’t true of the person who parted with a small fortune to convert this particular 964 - but for the next owner, it very well might be. And how nice that you get to recoup your cash mountain while making someone else’s dream come true...

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Billy_Whizzzz

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