Singer reimagines the Dakar Porsche
So says Singer’s Maz Fawaz of the Porsche restorer’s latest objet d’art – a wild o -road competition car born of Anglo-American expertise.
To date, Singer’s place in the world has been the restoration of 964-gen Porsche 911s into uprated road and track machines of startling beauty. But now, as proof of its restless ambition and peerless contacts book (it’s previously teamed up with the likes of Williams, Brembo and even the late Porsche engine Jedi Hans Mezger), we have the All-Terrain Competition Study, and the first of two cars that work’s informed (a second, tarmac-spec machine will be finished this year). The pair, commissioned by a long-term client and friend of the company, combine bespoke engineering, a ruthless attention to detail and Singer’s trademark aesthetic flair with an infectious sense of fun.
‘WE DIDN’T SAY “YES” STRAIGHT AWAY’
‘The initial conversation was around a taller version of Singer’s prior work, but when we considered the usage here [desert races in the US, primarily] it became clear this project would be a complete departure for us. We knew we weren’t qualified to prepare a rally car, but we knew a man who was, Richard Tuthill. Richard can’t be out-qualified for experience with air-cooled 911 rally cars.’ (Tuthill worked with Prodrive on Porsche’s SC/RS rally 911s in the ’80s, continues to enjoy success in gruelling classic rallies with modified 911s, and won the 2015 WRC R-GT Championship with a 997 GT3.)
‘THIS PROJECT HAD TO BE LEGITIMATE’
‘All of the decisions around the engineering were made with Richard’s experience, and that was crucial – this project had to be legitimate. Rob [Dickinson, Singer’s creative driving force] and I weren’t interested in just doing another tall 911. The owner’s usage defined the car, which is why I guess we
now have something that looks like the Dakar 959.
‘Laying down the specification started with the wheels and tyres. In off-road racing you need really big, very heavy tyres. And if you’re using big, heavy tyres you need a lot of power. [The engine’s a twin-turbo 964-based flat-six making some 450bhp and 420lb ft as a baseline set-up.] Then there’s the four-wheel drive, which is mostly a fantasy in desert racing because it’s so hard to deliver the required wheel travel together with driven wheels. The engineering required to make the wheels go up and down like that [each corner runs twin five-way adjustable dampers], to package four-wheel drive into what is not a big car, and to make the thing behave the way it needed to when you’ve got it bent out of shape on a loose surface – Richard was able to reach into his connections and experience to do all that.
‘It’s been flawless in initial testing, which isn’t always the case with us, and Richard tells me it’s nicely balanced, with a lot of grip – and very, very fast.’
‘IT COULDN’T BE UGLY’
‘The shape was guided by race requirements and the owner’s ambitions. That meant Rob was working within an unusual package for us. The headlights are from a GT3 Le Mans car, for example, so we have this amazing level of lighting, but as soon as you do that you leave the world of the classic 911 behind. There were a lot of requirements, from wheel travel to thermal management, and then of course it couldn’t be ugly – that smoothing out was Rob and the owner.’
‘THE ENGINE WE DID HERE IN CALIFORNIA’
‘It’s a 3.6, to give us thicker cylinder walls for reliability. The turbos mean we can up the boost for more power, but we wanted it to be drivable. The four-wheel drive meant we needed a lot low-down power, and of course it needed to be happy in the heat and dust of the desert.’
‘It’s been flawless in initial testing, which isn’t always the case, and very, very fast’