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| 911 Modified by Singer - Porsche 911 Tribute |
ROB DICKINSON, 49, recalls the first time he saw a Porsche 911. His family was motoring up the highway toward Béziers, during their annual vacation in France's Languedoc region, when his father, something of a car buff, told Rob and his brother to look out the back window. "There's a car approaching," he said. "That's called a Porsche 911."
Five-year-old Rob leaped up on the back seat and gazed at the metallic green Targa screaming up the inside lane. "It made a huge impression on me," Dickinson says, "the sense that the 911 has two characters, this bright, smiley, happy fat front face and this angry rear end which goes hand in hand with the raspy sound of the thing."
That madeleine moment, an anthropomorphic first glimpse of the 911 as a living, breathing animal, triggered a lifetime spent adoring, owning and dreaming about the car. Every childhood birthday he asked his father, a French teacher, to take him to the nearest Porsche dealership in Colchester, England, so he could sit in the showroom cars. It is also the foundational moment of Singer Vehicle Design, a Sun Valley, California, company that produces what is officially called the Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer, though that long-winded name barely begins to explain what Dickinson and his team actually create. If the great car designers of the 1960s had had access to today's ultralight carbon fibers and alloys and computerized fuel injection, braking and suspension systems, they might have built something like the Singer. It's essentially a hypermodern car wrapped in timeless, artisanal retro styling—today's version of yesterday's supercar of tomorrow. Or, as Car and Driver calls it, "The best early '70s Porsche 911 that never existed."
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| 911 Modified by Singer - Porsche 911 Tribute |
Singer's modification of the Porsche 911 manages to be both a tribute to those classic models and a 175-mph rocket with finger-twitch-sensitive handling that can hold its own against the latest offerings from Ferrari (or Porsche, for that matter). Dickinson has created this supercar by being uniquely true to the Porsche heritage, building air-cooled Porsches more beautiful, more drivable and quicker than almost anything Porsche itself managed to do by taking advantage of a unique Porsche quirk—virtually every part from every Porsche 911 in the air-cooled era from 1963 to 1998 can be transplanted to any other air-cooled Porsche 911. This allows Dickinson to choose the best of breed for every nut, bolt and switch on the car, or else to manufacture better versions himself. "Let's take the best engine, shove it in the best chassis, put the best brakes on it, the best wheels, best, best, best," he says of his initial inspiration for Singer. "I have a very clear knowledge of when I know something feels right. There was never any doubt that if I was allowed to build the car I wanted to build, people would love it."
IF YOU WATCHED a lot of MTV in the early '90s, you probably saw Rob Dickinson fronting the alternative rock band Catherine Wheel, whose biggest hit, "Black Metallic," reached No. 9 on Billboard's alternative rock charts in 1992. Rob, whose cousin Bruce Dickinson is lead singer of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden, spent the '90s being a rock star, playing on bills with the Foo Fighters and INXS and touring with the Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead, with whom Catherine Wheel was most frequently compared. With his rock 'n' roll money Dickinson bought his first Porsches, including rock guitarist Alvin Lee's ultrarare 1973 2.4S, and set about restoring them to original factory specifications. Dickinson, who had actually worked a brief, pre–rock star stint as a designer for British sports car manufacturer Lotus, quickly realized "this slavish adherence to originality wasn't for me, because the car wasn't as good as it could be."
Dickinson broke up the band in 2000—"I didn't want to be an old rocker. It's a nasty business"—and moved to Los Angeles. At last he was able to rebuild a Porsche that embodied his vision of what a 911 should be: a Bahama yellow 1969 911E that became famous among 911 enthusiasts, in part because it was the poster car for the influential R Gruppe, a purist Porsche club whose members strive to meticulously restore and modify vintage 911s. Dickinson was living in Hollywood at the time, and everywhere he went, people were offering to buy his car. "I was sick of people asking, but I knew if I could build this car, make it repeatable, if we got this right, I knew something good would come of it."
The success of Singer is built partly on Dickinson's still formidable frontman charisma. He is the chief designer, creative director and co-founder of the company and its best salesman. He has accepted deposits for more than 40 cars; there are currently 15 in collections around the world. (Technically, Singer is modifying the cars, not building them, as each customer delivers to the Singer factory a Porsche 911 964 that is then officially "restored.") The factory in which he is now turning out a car roughly every three weeks holds what must be the largest collection of Porsche parts from the air-cooled era in the United States, with piles of red brake calipers (from the 993 Turbo), air-conditioning compressors (also from the 993), gear boxes (from the 964) and intake manifolds (from the 996 GT3) piled neatly in bins in vast storerooms.
Walking through the Singer storage area with Dickinson offers a telling perspective on the jeweler's precision that goes into rebuilding and refinishing each component, even those purchased new from Porsche. That intake manifold, for example, typically costs about $150, but Singer grinds off the excess metal, takes the flashing marks off it, polishes it to a mirror finish, and then sends the manifold to a custom fabricator who builds and attaches the flanges. After that it goes to a laser engraver who etches on the word PORSCHE, and then the final touch is mounted: an original gold badge from a Porsche 356. The manifold costs about $3,000 by the time Singer is done with it. Now imagine that level of bespoke detail on every single aspect of the car, from wheels to engine to seats to interior, and you get an idea why his vehicles cost $500,000. Dickinson says he is barely breaking even on each car. "Building a half-a-million-dollar 911 is not the most sensible business plan," he says.
The same meticulous attention to detail that goes into the engine, suspension and brakes is all made tactile and visible in the cockpit, where every material—from the leather latticework dashboard to the Bakelite gearshift to the Recaro seats—is manufactured by Singer yet harks back in poetic fashion to the late '60s and early '70s. If James Bond were to step from his Aston Martin into a Porsche, it would be the Singer.
Yet the Singer is in no way a retro car. The carbon-fiber, ultra-lightweight body—custom-built from scratch for Singer by design and manufacturing firm Aria Group—allows the car to weigh in at just 2,700 pounds (400 pounds lighter than a typical 911). The flat six-cylinder engine comes in three options, ranging from 280 horsepower to 390 horsepower. (The original engine cases are always reused after machining, so the engine and chassis numbers match.) The Singer has a wider stance and fatter haunches than a standard 911; the chubby 17-inch wheels, designed and built according to Singer's specifications, make the car appear muscular. A trademark center-fill gas cap atop the front hood manages to make the Singer look utterly new yet immediately familiar. It retains, Dickinson says, "that friendly Porsche face. It's a car that women take an immediate fancy to."
Driving the Singer Porsche 911 is a revelation—especially for anyone who owns a newer Porsche 911, as I do. From the moment I sink into the Singer seats, the custom-designed suspension transfers the engine's happy gurgles up my arms and down my fingers. I release clutch, tap gas, steer, shift and start swinging the car into the twisty mountain roads a few miles from the Singer factory. The tight yet smooth suspension, the responsiveness of the car to each turn of the Momo Prototipo wheel bolted to an early-'70s steering hub, make driving the Singer Porsche 911 a visceral experience. Dickinson calls it "being connected to the car," and that's how I feel as I push the Singer up Little Tujunga Canyon Road, tossing the car into the hairpins and causing Dickinson to visibly cringe. I'm riding the clutch too hard for his liking and then freewheeling into some turns before downshifting, all of which reveals that I'm a novice at handling this much air-cooled power.
