CARS I PEOPLE I SCOOPS I MOTORSPORT I ANALYSIS – THE MONTH ACCORDING TO CAR
SINGER STRETCHES ITS WINGS
Singer Vehicle Design’s latest project is a track-ready weapon inspired by Porsche’s racing heritage. By Jake Groves
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Clearly Singer Vehicle Design has its own Large Hadron Collider stretch-ing between its Californian home and UK outpost. Its latest project smashes together two of its tastiest restoration programmes – 2018’s Dy-namics and Lightweighting Study and the 930-inspired Turbo Study (explainer panel on page 11) – with explosive, world-bending result.
The new Dynamics and Light-weighting Turbo Study (snappy) is Singer’s most extreme project yet, in-troducing racing-car know-how and aero, and creating a car that treads the fine line between road and track.
It’s also proof of Singer’s growing confidence when it comes to distill-ing that pure adrenaline hit. ‘Our Dynamics and Lightweighting Study heralded a new era,’ says Singer Group CEO Mazen Fawaz.
‘It facilitated enormous matura-tion of our operations in California and the UK. We’ve collaborated with some of the most famous names of the automotive world here.’
Singer’s latest project also arguably pushes the 964-generation 911 (where every Singer project starts) to its absolute limit. ‘With the Turbo Study we wanted owners to be able to focus more on luxury grand tour-ing than previous studies. DLS Turbo is intended to enable a roadgoing car that’s highly capable on track. Our detailed development and testing schedules at facilities including Nar-do [in Italy], Idiada [Spain] and the Nürburgring enable us to carefully prove out the engineering.’ And it’s quite some engineering. The bodywork is crafted from car-bonfibre, and the DLS Turbo takes heavy design inspiration from the Porsche 934/5. Rob Dickinson, founder and executive chairman of Singer Group, calls the DLS-T ‘the perfect canvas to honour the Type 934/5 and its vital role in the genesis of the 911 as a racing car.’
The wide-arched and tall-winged racer was meant to compete in IMSA events before it was banned. Instead, the 934/5 dominated the 1977 Sports Car Club of America Trans-Am en-durance series as well as the 6 Hours of Watkins Glen. The wide-arched design has become an aftermarket supplier’s dream, aped by outfits in-cluding RAUH-Welt Begriff.
Instead of a copy, however, Singer Vehicle Design has put its own spin on the iconic look. Every DLS Turbo includes a central front intake as well as monstrous rear wheelarches with their own intake and NACA ducts to help keep the brakes and whopping turbochargers cool. Race-spec aero-dynamic analysis has been applied here, too.
This time, though, a road and a track variant are
