Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer
Discussion
Davey S2 said:
I remember Andy74B dismissing Singer a few years ago on the grounds of cost but he's somewhat changed his mind since his car was delivered last year.
Very understated grey exterior with dark interior. Really stunning car.
.
If i ever get to a position where i'm able to buy a Singer one day(highly unlikely) it'll be in a nice Grey with a dark interior, exactly the way you describe Andy's car..Very understated grey exterior with dark interior. Really stunning car.
.
Penguinracer said:
Slippy, while it's definitely a topic deserving of it's own thread, I'd be interested to hear of your observations of the current Ruf products.
While I've admired Ruf's from afar, I always assumed that they presented a pinnacle in 911 engineering.
Are they no longer what they used to be?
The fact they designed & built their own V8 & then carbon-tubbed models suggests they were definitely in at the deep-end of engineering development,but were some of these products problematic?
Please feel free to post your observations in a new thread - I'm genuinely interested.
Let me state here and now, I'm not a Ruf expert. The likes of McLaren F1 owner Flemke and Toby Baxendale (TB993T) on PH have far, far more indepth knowledge of the company and its products than I.While I've admired Ruf's from afar, I always assumed that they presented a pinnacle in 911 engineering.
Are they no longer what they used to be?
The fact they designed & built their own V8 & then carbon-tubbed models suggests they were definitely in at the deep-end of engineering development,but were some of these products problematic?
Please feel free to post your observations in a new thread - I'm genuinely interested.
My experiences of Ruf products are either from magazine articles/videos or have been drawn from Ruf cars I’ve seen been worked on over the past 10 years or so. But like you, I admired them from afar.
The legendary Yellowbird was featured in several now defunct magazines, and the now defunct Performance Car magazine did a feature on Stefan Roser and his then little publicised exploits around the legendary "Green Hell", but more pertinently for me, that feature highlighted the availability of a Ruf produced VHS video of his exploits, both in car and from the trackside. Suffice to say I ordered a copy forthwith.
The Yellowbird was an object lesson in how to develop and hone the "humble" 911 into a car that could stand toe to toe with the the other contenders for the crown of the fastest car in the world, that it did so partially with turbocharged brute force and by retaining the 911's minimal frontal area, impressed me greatly.
Ruf became synonymous with engineering excellence, modifying and improving the oily bits of Stuttgart’s finest aircooled products. Any aesthetic modifications were driven my the need to improve cooling or high speed stability etc, style over substance was not the Ruf way, and I admired Alois and his company for that.
The introduction of watercooling to the 911 range (along with the Boxster and Cayman) must have brought new challenges for Ruf, and to that end Flemke on PH had a Boxster converted by Ruf, I'm unsure if this was a simple power upgrade/conversion or a complete Ruf model (a 3400 S or 3600 S ?) but if I recall correctly, he had numerous issues with it, and whilst he found the staff at Ruf to be ever helpful, one sensed he was less than impressed with the quality of the finished product.
Some years ago I saw a Ruf 997 R Kompressor with it's supercharger removed, that car remained off the road for many, many months whilst the person tasked with fixing it "battled" with the staff at Ruf to get the supercharger overhauled. IIRC they were reticent to rebuild the existing unit, instead they wanted to sell him a new unit, but they weren't available from the manufacturer ...
The CTR 3 I've frequently seen the bowels of, was owned by a gentleman well known in the Porsche community and I suspect on PH too. On the surface it looked a mightily impressive car, but once one delved into the nuts and bolts beneath the nicely CNC'd machined alloy suspension components ,the carbon fibre airbox and body trim panels, the cracks (and cost cutting) began to appear.
The example I all too often saw being fettled, required many, many hours be invested in it, to ensure it ran reliably, such was the lack of attention to detail in many aspects of the build.
Don't get me wrong, the 996 Turbo based Mezger engine it utilised was mighty, as were their 996 Turbo/GT2 3.8 "Nardo" engine conversions. Conservatively rated at 590-600hp, they actually produced closer to 650hp ...
The attention to detail in those engine conversions was impressive (as it should have been for the price) the 3.8 Nardo conversion featured beautifully sculpted inconel exhaust manifolds, and to make the engine rev and breathe better, they also fitted GT3 cams. In short, they were properly developed, built (and tested on the company's Schenck dyno facility) engines.
I hope the new carbon fibre tubbed SCR is a return to the glory days, it's credentials certainly stack up, and there's clearly been no lack of investment in the project. Only time will tell if it's a worthy rival to Singer's products, but for me the loss of air cooling for the flat 6 powerplant is retrograde step too far, and I'm not completely convinced by the styling (or indeed the wheel design) but it sounds as if a lot of attention has gone into the car's chassis dynamics to improve how it drives and its stability.
The price looks to be 650K euros, so not a huge difference to what Rob Dickinson wants for a Singer.
I'll take an example of each, the Ruf in Rubystone red, the Singer in BMW Silver Grey please.
Taffy66 said:
Davey S2 said:
I remember Andy74B dismissing Singer a few years ago on the grounds of cost but he's somewhat changed his mind since his car was delivered last year.
Very understated grey exterior with dark interior. Really stunning car.
.
If i ever get to a position where i'm able to buy a Singer one day(highly unlikely) it'll be in a nice Grey with a dark interior, exactly the way you describe Andy's car..Very understated grey exterior with dark interior. Really stunning car.
.
Slippy, thank you for the valuable insight.
The fact that Ruf now has a UK service centre suggests that they became aware that they perhaps weren't providing the level of support & service which their affluent UK clients expected.
I sincerely hope that their products return to the primacy they enjoyed during the mid-late '80's with the Yellow Bird & that they set new standards in 911 engineering.
For some reason I have a soft spot for them relative to Singer - perhaps because they are aesthetically more understated & seem to prioritise engineering excellence over marketing.
The fact that Ruf now has a UK service centre suggests that they became aware that they perhaps weren't providing the level of support & service which their affluent UK clients expected.
I sincerely hope that their products return to the primacy they enjoyed during the mid-late '80's with the Yellow Bird & that they set new standards in 911 engineering.
For some reason I have a soft spot for them relative to Singer - perhaps because they are aesthetically more understated & seem to prioritise engineering excellence over marketing.
Slippydiff said:
Let me state here and now, I'm not a Ruf expert. The likes of McLaren F1 owner Flemke and Toby Baxendale (TB993T) on PH have far, far more indepth knowledge of the company and its products than I.
My experiences of Ruf products are either from magazine articles/videos or have been drawn from Ruf cars I’ve seen been worked on over the past 10 years or so. But like you, I admired them from afar.
The legendary Yellowbird was featured in several now defunct magazines, and the now defunct Performance Car magazine did a feature on Stefan Roser and his then little publicised exploits around the legendary "Green Hell", but more pertinently for me, that feature highlighted the availability of a Ruf produced VHS video of his exploits, both in car and from the trackside. Suffice to say I ordered a copy forthwith.
The Yellowbird was an object lesson in how to develop and hone the "humble" 911 into a car that could stand toe to toe with the the other contenders for the crown of the fastest car in the world, that it did so partially with turbocharged brute force and by retaining the 911's minimal frontal area, impressed me greatly.
Ruf became synonymous with engineering excellence, modifying and improving the oily bits of Stuttgart’s finest aircooled products. Any aesthetic modifications were driven my the need to improve cooling or high speed stability etc, style over substance was not the Ruf way, and I admired Alois and his company for that.
The introduction of watercooling to the 911 range (along with the Boxster and Cayman) must have brought new challenges for Ruf, and to that end Flemke on PH had a Boxster converted by Ruf, I'm unsure if this was a simple power upgrade/conversion or a complete Ruf model (a 3400 S or 3600 S ?) but if I recall correctly, he had numerous issues with it, and whilst he found the staff at Ruf to be ever helpful, one sensed he was less than impressed with the quality of the finished product.
Some years ago I saw a Ruf 997 R Kompressor with it's supercharger removed, that car remained off the road for many, many months whilst the person tasked with fixing it "battled" with the staff at Ruf to get the supercharger overhauled. IIRC they were reticent to rebuild the existing unit, instead they wanted to sell him a new unit, but they weren't available from the manufacturer ...
The CTR 3 I've frequently seen the bowels of, was owned by a gentleman well known in the Porsche community and I suspect on PH too. On the surface it looked a mightily impressive car, but once one delved into the nuts and bolts beneath the nicely CNC'd machined alloy suspension components ,the carbon fibre airbox and body trim panels, the cracks (and cost cutting) began to appear.
The example I all too often saw being fettled, required many, many hours be invested in it, to ensure it ran reliably, such was the lack of attention to detail in many aspects of the build.
Don't get me wrong, the 996 Turbo based Mezger engine it utilised was mighty, as were their 996 Turbo/GT2 3.8 "Nardo" engine conversions. Conservatively rated at 590-600hp, they actually produced closer to 650hp ...
The attention to detail in those engine conversions was impressive (as it should have been for the price) the 3.8 Nardo conversion featured beautifully sculpted inconel exhaust manifolds, and to make the engine rev and breathe better, they also fitted GT3 cams. In short, they were properly developed, built (and tested on the company's Schenck dyno facility) engines.
I hope the new carbon fibre tubbed SCR is a return to the glory days, it's credentials certainly stack up, and there's clearly been no lack of investment in the project. Only time will tell if it's a worthy rival to Singer's products, but for me the loss of air cooling for the flat 6 powerplant is retrograde step too far, and I'm not completely convinced by the styling (or indeed the wheel design) but it sounds as if a lot of attention has gone into the car's chassis dynamics to improve how it drives and its stability.
The price looks to be 650K euros, so not a huge difference to what Rob Dickinson wants for a Singer.
I'll take an example of each, the Ruf in Rubystone red, the Singer in BMW Silver Grey please.
Great Post, more of the same on PH please! My experiences of Ruf products are either from magazine articles/videos or have been drawn from Ruf cars I’ve seen been worked on over the past 10 years or so. But like you, I admired them from afar.
The legendary Yellowbird was featured in several now defunct magazines, and the now defunct Performance Car magazine did a feature on Stefan Roser and his then little publicised exploits around the legendary "Green Hell", but more pertinently for me, that feature highlighted the availability of a Ruf produced VHS video of his exploits, both in car and from the trackside. Suffice to say I ordered a copy forthwith.
The Yellowbird was an object lesson in how to develop and hone the "humble" 911 into a car that could stand toe to toe with the the other contenders for the crown of the fastest car in the world, that it did so partially with turbocharged brute force and by retaining the 911's minimal frontal area, impressed me greatly.
Ruf became synonymous with engineering excellence, modifying and improving the oily bits of Stuttgart’s finest aircooled products. Any aesthetic modifications were driven my the need to improve cooling or high speed stability etc, style over substance was not the Ruf way, and I admired Alois and his company for that.
The introduction of watercooling to the 911 range (along with the Boxster and Cayman) must have brought new challenges for Ruf, and to that end Flemke on PH had a Boxster converted by Ruf, I'm unsure if this was a simple power upgrade/conversion or a complete Ruf model (a 3400 S or 3600 S ?) but if I recall correctly, he had numerous issues with it, and whilst he found the staff at Ruf to be ever helpful, one sensed he was less than impressed with the quality of the finished product.
Some years ago I saw a Ruf 997 R Kompressor with it's supercharger removed, that car remained off the road for many, many months whilst the person tasked with fixing it "battled" with the staff at Ruf to get the supercharger overhauled. IIRC they were reticent to rebuild the existing unit, instead they wanted to sell him a new unit, but they weren't available from the manufacturer ...
The CTR 3 I've frequently seen the bowels of, was owned by a gentleman well known in the Porsche community and I suspect on PH too. On the surface it looked a mightily impressive car, but once one delved into the nuts and bolts beneath the nicely CNC'd machined alloy suspension components ,the carbon fibre airbox and body trim panels, the cracks (and cost cutting) began to appear.
The example I all too often saw being fettled, required many, many hours be invested in it, to ensure it ran reliably, such was the lack of attention to detail in many aspects of the build.
Don't get me wrong, the 996 Turbo based Mezger engine it utilised was mighty, as were their 996 Turbo/GT2 3.8 "Nardo" engine conversions. Conservatively rated at 590-600hp, they actually produced closer to 650hp ...
The attention to detail in those engine conversions was impressive (as it should have been for the price) the 3.8 Nardo conversion featured beautifully sculpted inconel exhaust manifolds, and to make the engine rev and breathe better, they also fitted GT3 cams. In short, they were properly developed, built (and tested on the company's Schenck dyno facility) engines.
I hope the new carbon fibre tubbed SCR is a return to the glory days, it's credentials certainly stack up, and there's clearly been no lack of investment in the project. Only time will tell if it's a worthy rival to Singer's products, but for me the loss of air cooling for the flat 6 powerplant is retrograde step too far, and I'm not completely convinced by the styling (or indeed the wheel design) but it sounds as if a lot of attention has gone into the car's chassis dynamics to improve how it drives and its stability.
The price looks to be 650K euros, so not a huge difference to what Rob Dickinson wants for a Singer.
I'll take an example of each, the Ruf in Rubystone red, the Singer in BMW Silver Grey please.
Yellow491 said:
There are a few may be four companies over the years who have tried the ruf agency/service centre etc.
And one UK company that advertised themselves as a Ruf agency, but weren't (according to Alois ....)Yellow491 said:
Slippy fairly sure my mates ruf build is aircooled ,will ask.
"Hanging off the back of the chassis is a RUF-designed water-cooled 4.0-liter flat-six that makes 510 hp at 8100 rpm and 347 lb-ft of torque"Quoted from this Road & Track feature Paul :
https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-shows/geneva-auto...
I'm sure it's a far from definitive article, but one would hope they'd get the basics right ...
Slippydiff said:
"Hanging off the back of the chassis is a RUF-designed water-cooled 4.0-liter flat-six that makes 510 hp at 8100 rpm and 347 lb-ft of torque"
Quoted from this Road & Track feature Paul :
https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-shows/geneva-auto...
I'm sure it's a far from definitive article, but one would hope they'd get the basics right ...
Extract taken from 2018 Brochure,so there may have been some developments since then.Quoted from this Road & Track feature Paul :
https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-shows/geneva-auto...
I'm sure it's a far from definitive article, but one would hope they'd get the basics right ...
lowndes said:
Extract taken from 2018 Brochure,so there may have been some developments since then.
The torque and horsepower figures tally up. "Crankcases loosely based on 996/7 Mezger engine", it sounds like a re-hashed 997 GT3 RS 4.0 motor with Ruf's own crankases.
I've seen an image of the Ruf crankcases, but I can't find it again now
Cheib said:
He changes his mind a lot....cancelled his Valkyrie I believe. Interesting character ! Works very hard and not at all flash. I used to work for the same company, knew him a bit but had no idea of quite how big his “car habit” was at the time. Although it’s on a different scale these days.
In fairness don’t change my mind that much. Singer I did struggle to justify years ago when 1st looked but having gone the modified 911 route a few times it starts to make more sense. Valkyrie- it’s not about changing my mind. I did cancel purely because I didn’t want £1.5m unsecured with a company that may not survive. The car is also heavily compromised from when we deposited and 2 years late already.
andy74b said:
Cheib said:
He changes his mind a lot....cancelled his Valkyrie I believe. Interesting character ! Works very hard and not at all flash. I used to work for the same company, knew him a bit but had no idea of quite how big his “car habit” was at the time. Although it’s on a different scale these days.
In fairness don’t change my mind that much. Singer I did struggle to justify years ago when 1st looked but having gone the modified 911 route a few times it starts to make more sense. Valkyrie- it’s not about changing my mind. I did cancel purely because I didn’t want £1.5m unsecured with a company that may not survive. The car is also heavily compromised from when we deposited and 2 years late already.
Cheers
Yellow491 said:
There’s a lot of coolant hoses there for an aircooled motor Paul ... 
As I said earlier in this thread, it sounds like a re-hashed Mezger, and it clearly is (nothing wrong with that, but let’s not kid ourselves it’s a new Ruf engine from the ground up, it’s isn’t)
As for the fake “fan housing” for the alternator, I mean come on ...
Ultimately it is an amazing car, and the carbon monocoque is a nice idea and beautifully executed, but they’ve messed with the tracks and the wheelbase, so it’s pretty far away from what Singer have done with the aircooled 964.
Is the whole concept “better” than a Singer ? No, I’d say it’s merely different
Would I have one ? Hell yes !!
andy74b said:
Cheib said:
He changes his mind a lot....cancelled his Valkyrie I believe. Interesting character ! Works very hard and not at all flash. I used to work for the same company, knew him a bit but had no idea of quite how big his “car habit” was at the time. Although it’s on a different scale these days.
In fairness don’t change my mind that much. Singer I did struggle to justify years ago when 1st looked but having gone the modified 911 route a few times it starts to make more sense. Valkyrie- it’s not about changing my mind. I did cancel purely because I didn’t want £1.5m unsecured with a company that may not survive. The car is also heavily compromised from when we deposited and 2 years late already.
Slippydiff said:
Yellow491 said:
There’s a lot of coolant hoses there for an aircooled motor Paul ... Them coolant pipes are full of fresh airAs I said earlier in this thread, it sounds like a re-hashed Mezger, and it clearly is (nothing wrong with that, but let’s not kid ourselves it’s a new Ruf engine from the ground up, it’s isn’t)
As for the fake “fan housing” for the alternator, I mean come on ...I know i know!,buts it’s differant.
Ultimately it is an amazing car, and the carbon monocoque is a nice idea and beautifully executed, but they’ve messed with the tracks and the wheelbase, so it’s pretty far away from what Singer have done with the aircooled 964. It should handle better;)
Is the whole concept “better” than a Singer ? No, I’d say it’s merely different
we will have to wait and see it in the flesh,should be one in the uk later in the year.Would I have one ? Hell yes !!
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