Now, any sort of Singer sighting is cause for celebration–they’ve made just so few of them that you’d have a better chance of running into an F40 in a Walmart parking lot–but when your pal rocks up for lunch in one, naturally it’s going to raise a lot of questions. Edward Lovett is no stranger to the buying and selling of tasty kit, he comes from a long line of car dealers in the UK. But this 4.0L monster, in his mind, takes the cake. After our lunch I flicked on the recorder to get a quick sense of what it’s like to own and order one of these things. Perhaps we should do a bit more on it in the future? *Winks at Edward*
TG: Edward, what’s it like when one finally decides that they are going to be purchasing a 911 reimagined by Singer?
EL: Quite simple really, first you have to get your head around the price and the waiting time and then you just have to sit there and rationalize whether buying that beautiful thing is worth the time and the money.
TG: So it’s my understanding that you were initially going to be one of the first guys to buy a Singer, is that correct?
EL: Yeah, I think I was originally going to be in the first 10 of their original run. They quoted me a year long wait time and an awfully large sum of money. I was like, “Are you mad?” I just couldn’t get my head around it. So I stewed on it for a year till I saw them at The Quail in Monterey, at which point the price had gone up 30% and the wait time had doubled. It truly was a “You’ve lost your mind” scenario.
TG: What are they at now?
EL: Well, I think you can probably expect to spend anywhere from a f*ckton to a boatload now, but once it finally arrives it’s just worth every penny.
TG: When you actually go into spec it, how detailed can you get?
EL: Everything you can change. They will do anything that you want. This car, we spent months going backward and forth with carpet, paint, trim, the weave, different designs of the weave. They’re all so helpful there. They all believe each car needs to be different and unique. Rob and Russ and the team, they’re so helpful. It’s great just to be a part of what they’re all about.
TG: You come from a long line of car people. I think that’s probably an understatement. You’ve driven, I have to assume, hundreds if not thousands of Porsches in your day. How does this drive in comparison, in an honest comparison to other Porsches that you’ve driven?
EL: As I think I mentioned earlier on, this does everything for me I want a Porsche to do. The way it looks, the way it makes me feel, it’s quick. It handles beautifully. It sounds fantastic. Most importantly, and a credit to Rob, you get in it, and it feels like a 911, and it drives like a 911.
TG: The reactions you must get.
EL: Yeah, I don’t have Singer written on the car anywhere, but people look at it in the street and just see a beautiful blue Porsche. You can see the way they look at it. They look at it differently to the way they look at a 996 or the newest 991. The few people, they just know what it is.
