Singer, purveyor of some of the finest air-cooled Porsche 911 restomods to have ever graced Earth, has just dropped details on its latest creation - a 1990 964 (Singer only works on 964s) called the ‘DLS’ built in cooperation with Williams. Yip, the Formula One team.
If painstaking attention to detail is an art, the folks at Singer are the grand masters of the form, and if you’ve followed the works this American company has produced since 2009 you’ll know all about its cars’ nickel plated billet switchgear, leather-lined engine bays, custom carbonfibre panels and perfectly upholstered seats complete with brass grommets.
Even the rev counters are bespoke units with readouts up to 11 000rpm as an homage to the movie Spinal Tap. Singer’s founder Rob Dickinson was the frontman for famed British rock group Catherine Wheel, and his cousin sang for Iron Maiden, by the way.
But the new DLS (Dynamics and Lightweighting Study) takes things to new levels. Like all Singer 964s, the car was stripped down to nothing, media blasted, seam-welded and reconstructed from the ground up, but here the use of magnesium, titanium, carbonfibre and other lightweight materials in the build has resulted in an astonishingly low curb weight of just 990kg. All parts suppliers were in on the weight saving act too, with Fuchs-inspired forged magnesium centrelock wheels by BBS, Brembo monobloc calipers and carbon discs, special Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres and a magnesium six-speed manual gearbox from Hewland all contributing to the cause.
But it’s out back where the real magic happens. Singer's customers can choose between all sorts of Porsche flat-six engines all the way up to 4-litres in capacity, but for the DLS project Williams Advanced Engineering was called upon for help with a special air-cooled four-cam 4.0 capable of just over 370kW.
The engine actually started life as a 3.6, but Williams upped capacity, threw in titanium conrods and aluminium throttle bodies, and topped it off with carbonfibre airbox housing carbon intake trumpets. The result revs to over 9000rpm - way beyond what an original late ‘80s and early ‘90s 3.6 could do.
Look close at the pictures and you’ll spot other details such as exposed linkage underneath a very modernised H-pattern gear lever, a carbonfibre roll cage with titanium butt joints, and ducts in the rear quarter windows to feed engine intakes. The tail lights also appear to have integrated aero outlets, we’re just not sure if they’re fed from the same window ducts or the vent in the roof.
The car, finished in Absinthe green with Blood Orange interior, is owned by American wind power tycoon Scott Blattner, who already owns four other Singer Porsches. We don’t know what the DLS costs, but we know other Singer projects regularly fetch around $500 000 (R7.1-million) and we wouldn’t be surprised if this one was nearly double that.
Want one? No problem. Singer will build another 75 DLS units (interestingly in Oxfordshire, England and not at its regular California headquarters), and you can spec yours however you like. Just like when ordering a Rolls Royce, every aspect of a Singer project is customisable right down to the last seat stitch or window switch.
Just get your order in fast because the 75 remaining cars will be snapped up by collectors quickly. Oh, and you have to supply your own 964.