Singer: the next chapter
Singer’s reimagined Porsches are evolving fast, while staying true to the original mission: perfection
The Turbo Study gets the look – whalet ail spoiler, moulded black rubber and all – but the muscle is exaggerated, the det ail crisper
A decade ago, Singer founder Rob Dickinson considered winding up the business he’d built ‘reimagining’ classic Porsche 911s. ‘We’d done 13 or 14 cars, people were saying nice things and clients knew they were proper.
But orders were trickling in, they were ferociously expensive cars to restore and we were losing money on every single one of them,’ he reveals.
‘In 2014 or 2015 I said, “Right, why don’t we give up?”’
Thankfully Dickinson did not give up. In fact, in the decade since, he’s doubled down, notably bringing Maz Fawaz onboard as CEO – a tech entrepreneur who ‘turned up in the car park in 2010 with avery good 993 RS replica, pretending to be a customer’. Together they’ve grown the workforce from seven people to 620 while dramatically expanding Singer’s footprint and customer base.
Today Singer has restored and upgraded more than 380 911s, which now typically cost from $900k plus the original car and taxes, with 150 of these completed in the last year alone. It has operations in California and the UK, and runs development programmes to TÜV standards in collaboration with OEM royalty; Michelin, Bosch, Brembo and Mahle.
A damp February day in England. Shutters rise on an industrial unit at Millbrook proving ground. Inside sit the cars being used to test the results of the Turbo and DLS Turbo Studies for clients –a glimpse of Singer’s next chapter and its first foray into the turbocharged Porsche era.
Alarge team mills around with bobble hats, laptops and coffees. Some are Singer’s own people, others represent those tier-one suppliers, while development driver and former 12 Hours of Sebring winner Marino Franchitti feeds back after his latest test run in the Turbo Study.
Yours for a little over $1m depending on spec, and with 499 restorations expected, the Turbo Study (the black car in these pictures is a Turbo Study prototype) caused a stir at Goodwood back in 2022, at that point already two years in the making and looking 100 per cent complete, but Singer’s quest for perfection continues.
Like the original 930 Turbo, Singer’s reinterpretation features aturbocharged air-cooled flat-six, manual gearbox and rear-wheel drive. It also gets the look –whaletail spoiler, moulded black rubber and all –but the muscle is exaggerated, the detail crisper, the fetishisation more overt. As Dickinson puts it: ‘Everything’s been touched, but at the same time it had to feel sincere to the original.’
