This Is Not a Porsche 911

This is not a Porsche 911. The Ruf SCR is a carbon-fiber creation from Germany’s Ruf Automobile made from the ground up to look like a 911. It’s not only better to drive than the Porsche but also one of the finest driver’s cars on sale today.

This story originally appeared in Volume 14 of Road & Track.

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Longtime readers of Road & Track will be familiar with Ruf. In our July 1987 top-speed shootout, a Ruf CTR—nicknamed “Yellow Bird” by our staff—posted a 211-mph run that trounced the likes of Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Porsche itself. But that’s not where the story begins. The company started as a repair garage in Bavaria in 1939 and evolved into a Porsche tuner in the late Seventies. One of its first cars was the SCR, Alois Ruf Jr.’s take on the 1978 911 SC.

“The SCR was an SC Ruf; that was the whole idea,” Ruf Jr. says. “We brought back more 911 in that model than Porsche was giving it at that time because the 911 SC was a reduced 911.” Fit with a larger 3.2-liter flat-six and Ruf’s gearbox, the SCR was a critical and commercial success.

In 2018, almost exactly 40 years after the introduction of that first SCR, Ruf unveiled a new one at the Geneva Motor Show. This one, finished in a coat of Irish green like its forebearer, was a distinctly more involved engineering exercise. The company would build the SCR on an all-new carbon-­fiber chassis, like the latest CTR introduced a year earlier. Ruf wanted to make a lighter 911 body out of aluminum, but it was too complicated to build and, by his estimation, still too heavy. Carbon fiber made more sense. So why not go all in and create a new monocoque? That would provide very low weight and allow for a double-­wishbone suspension with pushrod coil-overs, something you couldn’t dream of with a standard 911. The SCR’s carbon-fiber bodywork proportions suggest the air-cooled 964 generation, but a water-cooled 510-hp naturally aspirated 4.0-liter flat-six powers the new car. It’s Ruf’s development of the beloved old Mezger engine last used in the Porsche 997 GT3 RS.

From the carbon-bucket driver’s seat, you could fool yourself into thinking you’re in an air-cooled 911. The door frames and greenhouse are standard-issue pieces from the air-cooled era, as are the dashboard and the expansive view over the hood. Even the door shuts with the familiar 911 clink. Switchgear from a 997, top-hinged pedals, and gorgeous custom-made Ruf gauges shatter the vintage illusion. Still, the driving experience is very 911, honed to an incredibly fine degree.