What Singer creates when they restore and modify 964s isn’t really original in terms of the base idea—backdated 911s with engine swaps and bigger wheels have been around for quite some time now, and in terms of outright performance RUF sort of, you know, exists—but the work is elevated to a unique space because of the company’s meticulous attention to detail; the importance they place on a door handle for instance: which material to use, how to finish it, how it should feel to the touch and how it reflects the sunset. They build the pieces that would otherwise be borrowed, they place an equal degree of importance on the car’s aesthetic presence as its mechanical aptitude, and really, they touch everything to ensure that the amalgamation of all those covetable little details results in a car that people call by name and not by mod-list.
There seems to be a mandate of thoroughness in the Singer philosophy that allows each component to stand alone as a reflection of the entire machine, but in a sense, Singer-modified 911s can be boiled down to very well done resto-mods commissioned by people with open checkbooks and built by people who really know what they’re doing. I like Porsches as much and probably more than the next guy wishing one were in his garage, but it would also be nice to see car enthusiasts clamoring for a different top-shelf resto-mod, for lack of a better term.
I’m sure you can point me to numerous examples of shops making something in line with that, but let’s play in the hypothetical space where life’s more fun and we all have multi-bay garages stuffed full of toys that repel dust and never run out of fuel. So, if money were no object, which car would you give the “Singer treatment” to? What’s your base car? What’s going under the hood? How would you modify the body? What does the cockpit look and feel like?
A BMW E24 with Group 2-inspired bodywork and a hot S54 under the hood might get my vote, but what do you think? How about a Ferrari 355 with one of their recent turbocharged transverse eights nestled in an enlarged bay? Maybe a Nissan 240Z with a G-nose, GTR running gear, and an interior full of Alcantara and perforated leather? A first-gen fastback Mustang would be pretty sweet with a flat-plane V8 and a Trans-Am look with none of the roughness. It’s more than just engine swaps that we’re concerned with, so if you already have your dream car fully trimmed, by all means go into the details—they’re topical here.
Image sources:
635csi: 1-3
240Z: 1-2
240ZG: 1, 2, 3
355: 1, 2
