SINGER’S PORSCHE 911
Taking a classic, the 946 and making it better
IIF THERE’S A POSTER CAR for the retro-modernist automobile movement, this is surely it. By no means the first to combine classic 911 looks with modern 911 performance, the exquisite creations of Rob Dickinson and his dedicated team at Singer Vehicle Design are by common consent the most complete and the most covetable. Truly, madly, deeply wonderful machines, they shine with a level of quality and fanatical detailing that’s so close to perfect you feel slightly giddy just looking at a photograph of one.
If you’re a fan of classic 911s the idea of messing with Stuttgart’s mojo instinctively feels like something akin to heresy, yet the empathy with which the California-based company approaches the task of reinventing 964-generation Porsche 911s is absolute. These guys revere Porsche’s legacy and have steeped themselves in the kind of geeky knowledge that enables them to take inspiration from all the great 911s of the past but never directly copy any of them. They would certainly never seek to pass off Porsche’s work as their own, but for the record – and the appeasement of lawyers – the correct way to refer to this car is as a ‘Porsche 911 re-imagined by Singer Vehicle Design’. So now you know.
The results, as I’m sure you’re all aware, are breathtaking. The exacting nature of Singer’s restoration and re-imagining of Porsche’s 911 is legend, so I won’t revisit the process in detail, but suffice it to say, once a 964 enters the Sun Valley workshop it undergoes a transformation process that sees it lavished with thousands of hours of labour and fitted with the finest componentry available – a mix of bespoke and original Porsche parts – before emerging around eight months later as one of the world’s most desirable cars.
As you can no doubt imagine, every car is built to a very personal specification, as befits
Each car is lavished with thousands of hours of labour and fitted with the finest componentry
the totally bespoke nature of the commissioning process. Understandably, customers don’t tend to hold back, so whilst there are a number of engine, transmission and suspension options, people tend to go for the ultimate version. Well you would, wouldn’t you?
If there was ever a question mark over Singer’s business plan, it was whether there were enough people in the world prepared to spend upwards of ` 2.63 crore (before taxes and duties) on a revamped 964 911. Five years on – in which time Dickinson and crew have worked tirelessly with total commitment to the cause – any doubts have been replaced by a burgeoning order book. Annual production now sits at 25 cars. Forty have already been delivered and if you order one now you can expect to get it in two years. It’s a phenomenal and apparently
exponential success story, and one that has plenty more chapters to come if my sadly-off-the-record chat with Dickinson is anything to go by.
This particular car was the first Singer-modified 911 to come to the UK. If you were at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed there’s every chance you will have seen and heard it in action, or at the very least left your greasy noseprint on the driver’s window. It speaks volumes that even at the year’s finest gathering of historic and contemporary cars, this and Singer’s first reborn Targa pulled people in like magnets. It was while at Goodwood that we nabbed Dickinson and begged him for a chance to drive this car on proper UK roads. He in turn begged the extremely accommodating customer and plans were duly hatched for something I’ve longed for since first experiencing Singer’s work on US soil back in 2012.
Since then, not only has Singer’s order book expanded, but so has its team, which now extends to the UK. Sales are handled by supercar specialist Simon Furlonger, while everything else, from sourcing suitable 964s for prospective customers to servicing (and transporting cars to remote Welsh photo locations) is taken care of by Greg Cranmer of Heritage Auto Werks. Together they make a good team and further authenticate the seriousness of Singer’s operation and ambition.
It’s hard to describe how it feels to watch and listen as this car starts and is gently disgorged from its covered trailer. I’ve never seen an exotic butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, but as this 911 sits in the late summer sunshine, light glinting from its nickel-plated brightwork, aircooled motor cackling busily at a fast idle while serpentine vapours curl into the air from its
Singer preserves everything about a classic 911 that you want to keep
sawn-off exhaust pipes, it’s impossible not to stand mesmerised at the sight before you.
Regain your mental faculties and a multitude of things strike you. First is just how small the 964 is compared to today’s 991, even when wearing Singer’s generous carbonfibre curves. Then there’s the purity of that shape and the millimetric precision of the stance. Step closer and your eyes dart from detail to detail, then your hand reaches out to grasp the driver’s door handle (again, nickel-plated), at which point the whole process begins again as you get behind the wheel and drink it all in.
Few cars in my experience combine opulence and honesty so effortlessly. The woven leatherwork is beautiful, the brass collets in the vented seats a perfect nod to competition cars of the past, as is the lovely Momo Prototipo steering wheel – one of the few things Singer is happy to buy off-the-shelf. Oh, and then fit with its own billet-machined nickel horn-push. All these lovely materials are offset by the areas of exposed paintwork, in this case a glorious shade of orange christened ‘Yolk’. It is so rich and glossy, you feel like you could dip a soldier of toast into it.
So here you are, sat in this fabulous, ferociously valuable, privately owned and totally bespoke car. You should feel intimidated, almost too scared to start the thing and drive it away for fear of putting a mark on it, but as soon as you twist the key you feel completely at ease. And that’s the great joy of this car – it preserves everything about a Porsche 911 you want to keep. That intimacy and dedication to function, the ease of use and fuss-free operation that makes driving it feel like second nature.
Of course, there are the 911 quirks long since lost in the mists of time and evolution. Things such as the offset driving position combined with floor-hinged pedals that work shin muscles you’d forgotten existed. But there’s something – everything, actually – that feels so natural about this car that it’s like putting on a tailored jacket that fits so well you barely know you’ve got it on.
Rare is the car that looks this good and delivers a driving experience to match, but no sooner have you slotted first gear – noting the smoothness and perfect weighting of the Singer-fettled shift – brought the revs up a little, fed in the clutch and pulled away that you know this is a machine built by car obsessives for car obsessives. This car features Singer’s 3.8-litre flat-six. Developed by Cosworth, all Singer’s engines – that’s to say the 3.6, 3.8 and
the recently introduced 4.0 – are built by Ed Pink Racing Engines in California.
Good for 360bhp and 382Nm, the 3.8 is sensational. In fact there are times you have to remind yourself this is an air-cooled flat-six, such is its smoothness, response and appetite for revs. Don’t worry, it still has that uniquely gruff, respiratory note, but the way it sings (no pun intended) through its rev range is majestic and completely intoxicating. Mated to a six-speed gearbox, this makes for a car with intense performance. There’s an absolute wall of torque through the mid-range, yet the more you pour on the revs, the sharper and more intense the engine feels. You might not trouble the final few increments of Singer’s famous 11,000rpm tacho, but this thing howls to its limiter with an urgency quite unlike any largecapacity air-cooled flat-six that’s ever sat in the tail of a 911 road car. It’s like a race engine without the hissy fits.
It’s worth noting that, since its introduction, most of Singer’s orders have been upscaled to the new 4.0 motor. Someone has even ordered one to replace his 3.8. Mighty though the 3.8 is, the prospect of the 390bhp and 427Nm engine, complete with custom crankshaft, Carrillo conrods, Mahle barrels and pistons, Jenvey individual throttle bodies, and cylinder heads by Extreme Engineering is mouth-watering.
It’s impossible to tell where the original
car ends and Singer’s contribution
begins
Running on Öhlins suspension, custom tuned by the Swedish firm to specific Singer valving, this UK car is built to optimum road specification. It feels sublime, riding bumps and crests with serene pliancy, yet responding to steering – and throttle – inputs with clarity and immediacy.
You can feel some old-school 911 traits come into play, such as the obvious rearward weight bias and the occasional tendency to nod its head, but that’s the point of this car: the performance of a later GT3 (the first 4.0 Singer was timed at 3.3sec to 100kmph), the character and connection of the earlier cars and some newfound control and compliance that’s beyond any 911 you have ever experienced.
The weird thing about this car is that, much like the looks, it’s impossible to tell where the original car ends and Singer’s contribution begins. The feel and behaviour could only be that of a 911, the soundtrack, too. Yet the finesse and fine detail of its feedback and the fluidity of its progress across testing British roads and terrain is something else altogether. I love my 964 RS dearly, but it doesn’t have anything close to the delicacy of this car. In fact it wouldn’t know which way this car went.
All of which reinforces the sense that what Singer has done to the 964’s dynamics and performance is what you’d hope Porsche would have done had it spent the last 25 years perfecting the air-cooled car.
Some people don’t ‘get’ what Singer does. That’s understandable when the asking price for the finished article is so much more than the value of the car it’s based upon. Yet when you spend time with the car – quality time where you can pore over it and then go and drive it properly – you’re genuinely left wondering how they can do it for the money. And, if you’re anything like me, left wishing for the lottery win that would see one in your garage.
It’s no coincidence that the rise of the retromodern car comes at a time when modern highperformance cars have never been faster or easier to drive yet offer a level of performance that’s almost completely unusable on public roads. When your role as driver has been reduced to that of an awestruck bit player, is it any wonder we’ve started to crave the deeper satisfaction of a car that includes you in every mile of every journey at sane speeds?
Genuine classics offer some solace, but they come with compromises of their own. Not least the fact that in becoming appreciating assets reliant on low mileage and originality, many owners are afraid or reluctant to use them. What Singer does with the Porsche 911 gives those with the means and imagination a way of sidestepping that trap with a car that combines the best of classic and modern to deliver something with timeless qualities and limitless appeal. It’s a fabulous recipe. Once tasted, nothing else will do.