FIRST DRIVE: Singer’s DLS Project: the best Porsche 911? £2mil, 9,300rpm restomod on road & track

[Applause] [Music] noise spine tingling hair raising nate prickling noise we've forgotten how important it is haven't we when all around is going electric let's hear it for a car that celebrates sound [Music] this is the dls singers reimagined porsche 911 reimagined again a two million dollar reminder that to have a good time you need good tunes it's lighter than the standard car more powerful faster re-engineered from the ground up but why after all it's not like the standard car is no good this car dls stands for the dynamics and lightweighting study started out as a what if project five years ago a project that got completely out of hand but before i tell you about that i can't stand here and not go and drive it so here we are in an old porsche 964 doing things a porsche 964 has never been able to do before the trouble with old porsche 911s is that the rear axle is a fulcrum with the heavy engine behind it acting as a lever which can have the old front wheels lifted up and waggling in the air [Music] not here though not here this is something very different but still very much an old 911 as i shall now demonstrate because if you lift off and turn in you get slide [Music] you can use all the power lead on the back axle and get out of corners unbelievably fast the steering is dancing in my hands the pedals down there are so accurate and wonderful to use the whole car is to shut through with this precision and communication and if you've got this instant feedback you have confidence in it and the confidence allows you to play with the balance of it so you can sort of tweak it into corners really shouldn't be doing this [Music] in a car worth two million quid [Applause] oh it shouldn't be this friendly it shouldn't be this easy it really really shouldn't it's not really a car for big lurid drifts with smoke pouring off the wheels if you want that you need a heavy car with a long wheelbase and this isn't that instead this is a car that plays happily at the margins of grip it likes to have both axles worked evenly [Music] and then maybe slip into a bit of oversteer period correct skidding around [Music] oh just what a thing right bring the noise more noise all the noise oh yes indeed the engine is i haven't got any words i really don't have any words it's astonishing it's angrier wilder more intense than i'd even conceived that it could be so what i want to do is pull over and show you around it tell you how it differs to a regular singer and why exactly it can do what it does singer took an original car and asked themselves how can we make it better to drive so they may look similar but there's actually an awful lot of difference between these two cars so let's talk you through it starting with the arrow now down here all new splitter here intakes for the brake cooling here this is all new the whole car has been through a digital redesign with computational fluid dynamics done everywhere but the most interesting bit is what happens to the air further back now if you look here the glass is flush fitting it's been designed to tidy up all the airflow around and over the car the original 2.7 rs of 1973 famously had a ducktail spoiler but what's less well-known is it didn't really do very much this one is completely different they've dropped the roof line they've fitted this bridge spoiler to channel the air down over a plexiglass rear screen and onto the ducktail this is now 22 millimeters higher slightly more upright and has a five millimeter gurney flap built in it's now properly aerodynamically useful you might be wondering where singer has got all this aero expertise given it's a small californian outfit that's only been restoring 911s like that one for about a decade this whole car has been developed in conjunction with williams f1's advanced engineering department but now let's follow air down a different route not over the car but into the car and specifically into the engine through here below these rather lovely carbon intakes is an air-cooled engine something porsche hasn't done since the 993 died 25 years ago boredom stroked out to four liters still a flat six obviously four valves per cylinder that's a first for a road-going air-cooled porsche and twin injectors per cylinder lots of fuel lots of air lots of revs 9300 revs to be precise and to cope with that they have a greatest hits of exotic materials this fan here is magnesium so is its casing the exhaust down here is in canal there's lots of carbon even the valves are sodium filled titanium but before i close the artwork there is the ducktail lid these are the adjustments for the dampers and the dampers are made by xtc the same firm that built the dampers for most of seb loeb's world rally championship victories yes rally spec not race spec which maybe tells you something about how singer envisages this car and having the damper adjusters there means that you don't need to get on your back underneath the car or remove a wheel in order to change the settings however removing a wheel is exactly what i'm going to do now right check this out look at this beautiful piece it's the center lock wheel nut and it's just a beautiful item as much as anything else but really i want to talk to you about this because what we have here is a bespoke michelin tire now they're only building 75 of these but michelin have done them a bespoke cup two tire for it and these wheels they're bbs forged magnesium they're an absolute work of art and they don't weigh anything but really let's roll that over there come and have a look at this brembo opened up their entire breaking catalogue to singer and said you can have whatever you like so this is the same disc technology laid up carbon as the bugatti chiron uses and actually brembo had to redesign the entire caliper to fit inside the lovely wheel and it's these sorts of things these suppliers who wanted to be associated with this project like bosch as well who did all the abs and traction control for it that shows how much these companies wanted to be involved with singer on this little project but beyond that let me put that on there there's a lovely noise going on look you've got double wishbone suspension in here and to show you why that's important we need to go and have a look at the original car [Music] we'll have a look in there where you'll notice there is no upper wishbone in this car just a mcpherson strut and a lower arm so they have redesigned the entire front suspension on the dls just to improve the driving dynamics there's f1 thinking everywhere those carbon body panels outside are structural they add stiffness to the chassis and in here there's a 40 millimeter fia roll cage welded in but mainly you just look at it and think it's utterly beautiful this gorgeous momo steering wheel the gear lever all raised up high it just feels stunning and you look at it and it's just beautiful but i'm not somewhere beautiful right now and i want to be so i need to go and [Music] drive [Music] here we go again more noise more drama more flat six howling whale oh it's so good a thousand turbocharged horses or 500 with this immediacy in response 2 000 electric horsepower or a quarter of that but this noise come on is this every time because it's not all about speed how can it be that's not to say the dls is slow though 500 horsepower and 317 pounds for torque working on about a ton it goes but what i like is that singer doesn't really know how fast it is williams calculations suggest it should be able to do 210 miles an hour but the acceleration they haven't got a clue not 63 points something i really couldn't care less because out here with these roads and this car it's more about the experience of driving it's about building a relationship with the car and i know that sounds a bit twee and romantic but what is the dls if not a love letter to the porsche 911 singer's question to itself when developing this car was how great can an air cooled 911 be and my answer is this is quite possibly the greatest road car i've ever driven and to understand why that is we actually need to come to a stop because this is where the dls driving experience starts it's out here looking at it drinking it in looking at the sense of proportion to it the beautiful arches all the detailing it's the sense of anticipation and all of that just makes me want to get back to driving it but before i do it just gets better in here it's like motorsport and porsche retronist turned up to 11. and now once i've taken a moment to admire and appreciate this now i can go and drive and then you've got the startup experience you twist the key you hear the electrics come to life and then the rev counter just flicks in front of you it looks sensational the whole experience of being in this cabin with this carbon wheel and this gorgeous ski lever on his little raised plinth and you sit here in the sunshine with that scenery outside and you just think it's gonna be incredible and once you're moving it's just dazzling that gear change just gets so fluent and fast and crisp and it's teamed with an engine that just has oh the way the revs climb and die listen to it i'm just gonna downshift for the sake of it you blitz the throttle on the downshift and honestly i wouldn't consider myself a heel and toe god but in here i don't seem to be able to get it wrong and then you've got the whole way the car goes down the road and the steering's got this weight to it and at the track that concerned me to start with because i thought well when i start sliding it around is that weight going to stop me being as accurate as i want to be with the steering but it didn't at all but actually once you're up and moving you're aware it's just feel and weight gain to just give you an idea of how much everything's having to work and it just slices through corners tiny bit of body roll but mainly just this sense of both ends of the car working evenly it's such a special thing this but the brakes they're not only beautifully easy to modulate but they are so so powerful and i hadn't expected that but i think there's not many road cars i've driven that stop better than this and the steering when you come along these roads it just gently rides but works with you and that double wishbone front end just gives you so much potency on that front axle for turning in i'm just gonna slow down again because i want you to hear the full range of second gear off it goes how's that isn't that incredible what an amazing amazing noise and it's the response to the throttle the way it turns in that engine i hadn't expected it to be the star of the show if you like but it really is i can't think of a better road car engine or actually a race car engine that i've ever used i just can't it's absolutely fabulous so my concern and alarm over the value of this car was whether you'd actually dare to drive it on the road what it would feel like knowing you're piloting this much money down the road so easy so easy i've got no concerns about it at all because it's small and it fits and i have such incredible confidence in what it's going to do because the communication is there from everything the steering the chassis and perhaps above all the suspension which is just absolutely blinding these rally spec xtc dampers utterly incredible what they do because they give the car this amazing compliant primary ride so you're not aware of everything happening to the car to upset it but underneath that you feel every patter all the little tiny stuff in the road but it doesn't disturb you instead you just flow you instantly flow you build a complete rhythm with it it just blows my mind this car but that's the thing about this car you can slow it back down and you don't need to be going fast and that's why i'm having a better time in it on the road than i did on the track because i'm indulging everything in the car using every bit of the rev range just letting the steering flow and feel on difficult challenging roads and it's not putting a foot wrong okay the ride is slightly firm at low speeds but if you want to change that you know where the dampers are it's easy i genuinely think you could use this car every day if you wanted to i know no one probably will but god they're missing out i couldn't look at this in a garage and not drive it every day [Music] everything is important back in 2012 singer's founder rob dickinson scrawled that on the wall in a fit of peak and it's become singer's mantra it's why this car has taken five years to develop why the engineering the detailing the dynamics are so obsessively done it's an analog master class this car and utterly spectacular

Channel: Top Gear

Views: 1,019,113

Keywords: Top Gear, Top Gear Series, Car Review, Car Compare, Super Car, street car, BBC, BBC Studios, Chris Harris, Singer, Porsche, Porsche 911, Singer 911, Singer Porsche, Top Gear Singer, Retro, Old, 911, Porsche 911 Retro, Old 911, Singer DLS, singer 911, car reviews 2021, 911 Air Cooled, Turbo, Singer Drift, Singer Acceleration, Singer Exhaust, Singer Sound, Drifting, Drifts, New Porsche Siger, RUF, Porsche RUF, Porsche 911 Carrera, Porsche 964, Tuned

Id: Qghjl2tJsoo

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/AHornyEwok]

Crazy price but truly an amazing car. If I win the lottery, this is the first thing I’ll buy

[u/kraher]

Absolute 'money no object' dream car. Keep your Chirron, keep your 918, I'd have this every time.

[u/LuciusVarinus]

Matt Farah mentioned on the Rogan podcast a while back Chris Harris was a development driver for the DLS project. I wonder why Top Gear didn't get him to do the test drive for them also.

[u/Bonerchill]

I'd love to drive one on track, but I'd also love to have about a day with a lift and free rein to take pictures.

Otherwise, I'd rather drive a vintage- this is a bit much for my favorite roads.

[u/I_Nice_Human]

JFC the sound of that engine. Every piece of that car was modernized. Amazing.

[u/HelloWuWu]

This is the stuff dreams are made of. The reviewer does a really great job talking through the drive and feel.

God I wish I could drive one of these, much less own one.

A Singer and a Model X would be the dream two cars in my garage.

[u/lolparty247]

It's an amazing piece of machinery but not for 2 million pounds that is just crazy, that's ridiculous but then again, I also can't afford it lol