Singer's 100th Porsche 911 Restoration - Jay Leno's Garage

[Music] the episode of Jalen's garage very special vehicle today this is the 100th vehicle restored by singer you know they're one of the leaders in porsche restorations and they become well quite a force in the industry I used to read about them and all the European magazines and I thought well they must be near Austria somewhere or somewhere up in the mountains you know and then I would go out in the hills here and I'd see all these cars go by and I got looks like one of those singer cars and then I find out they're like two miles from there so right around the corner was a building on the corner but they've the name has become so synonymous its European handling and I don't know I call it German engineering that I just assumed they weren't even in this country let alone literally on the same block so it's uh it's kind of fun I was fortunate enough to be asked to do the foreword for their book which is a fabulous book well it's just an amazing company you know they started doing one or two porsche restorations and there's a reputation grew they were invited to Pebble Beach and at the quail and then pretty soon they became world famous and it's just it's just fun to see that you can do 100 cars you know a lot of places do two or three cars and then they go out of business so the customers follow but apparently they do such good work they they have a really loyal base and this is one of those vehicles it sells merely by word of mouth I don't see ads and magazines you'll see videos and you'll see the cars aren't shows like mine but this is one of those cars that really really speaks for itself let's bring in Tim brewer Kim you're the am I saying the right Gregorio Gregorio very good thanks for having us Jay no thanks thanks for doing this did you ever think you'd hit 100 cars oh absolutely not you're one of the first guy yeah yeah I was in the beginning with Rob we thought this was gonna be a passion project for a few people right turned out you know word of mouth caught hand you mentioned the quail we took our first order after the quail actually back in 2009 and then it kind of just snowballed and spiraled into this giant rock we have now and let's for people who are not familiar you only do you only restore air-cooled that's correct only work within 92 94 96 for series we do coops and targets we take some flavor from all the way from 63 to all the way through the 993 era okay so if I showed up with a 1967 911 I want to restore to original oh okay that's interesting for a while we were taking a lot of the the tired 964 is out there and turned out to be one of the the more modern platforms with a with the early look to it right it allowed us a good kind of starting point so what was the ethos if that's a correct word behind this what you chose this particular car what was the thinking to improve it to make it better faster stronger you know well I think the main ethos behind it was honoring the 9/11 sports car especially the air-cooled era of the 911 right we wanted to take everything distill it and optimize it into what our celebration of a air-cooled 911 would be now do you have people that show up with water-cooled 911s oh please you must do my car easy is it like a lot of money i back up the truck we don't we yeah we do get those yeah yeah but no interest no no you know we enjoy the formula we have now and and what is it about the 911 air-cooled that is so fascinating for I mean I get it I've got one myself I'm just trying to explain to people who don't quite get it is it the lightweight is the ease of maintenance is it's the simplicity of the air cooling all of those I think it's all of that and I think there's a lot of duality in the vehicle meaning I think you can take it for groceries and then go carve up Angela's crest right all in the same vehicle and you feel like you were having two different experiences I mean obviously when Portia come out with the water-cooled engine they saw the limits of the 911 emissions wise design wise all that kind of stuff what's the most amount of horsepower one can get out of an air-cooled 911 without becoming just some crazy uncle so this particular car runs our four liter engine it starts off with a base three six liter case which is the engine that actually came in this particular car and that's putting out about 390 horsepower and about 315 foot-pounds of torque for us that feels like our sweet spot and with four liters at this displacement in an air engine we feel we're pretty optimized in terms of longevity and driving pleasure I'll call it and what is this way now you've got the carbon-fiber fenders and whatnot so this car comes in around 26 70 oh yeah it's all carbon-fiber except for the doors yeah so you have a steel monocoque steel doors carbon-fiber hood front wings roof rear fenders deck lid and bumpers yeah you might flew at the head of McLaren hen this thing arlov they said you know the hospital wars are over we won I mean you have cars literally with a thousand fifteen hundred horsepower but I don't know if it necessarily increases the driving pleasure just you get from A to B quicker you know I always say the greatest thing about my 356 twin cam the 1963 when I have I enjoy watching the tax sweep if it goes at a rate that my eye can follow and enjoy and still see the road Monaco okay now I'm in prison what what happened I got arrested I hit a child what happened you know I mean so to me you know 2,600 pounds and 400 horsepower you can do incredible things with that yeah yeah so everything from here forward is carbon fiber correct okay yes and how is that structurally is it stronger than the steel does it flex I mean so all of our panels are autoclaved they're done to pretty much of motorsports grade these days the carbon itself does not really offer any structural rigidity the vehicle we left the the standard monocoque that porsche design many years ago in a intact better to leave well enough alone we do seam weld chassis zhan upon request overall the 964 was it generally a very strong platform to begin with especially torsionally so we felt that there wasn't really much to go for there how does it work do I bring my car to you do I tell you what I want you find me a car and then build to those specifications what is the normal process well normal process is you contact us telling us you'd like to pursue our services we can help you locate a donor vehicle right or some people like to bring us their own we had an overseas customer that brought his car to New York and drove it to California really where we've restored it into his singer yeah Wow that's dedication yeah well I got to really I think enjoy it when in its purest form and turned into you know what we do with it after all I'm trying to think what visually is different obviously the filler in the center of the hood is different is there more Flair here in the front than there was there is the early cars tended to be narrow until you got to the turbo era in the 70s and we tried to take a little bit of inspiration from from the eras all the way through so you'll see a little turbo influence maybe a little but it's all really kind of down to what we felt would be proportionally correct the roof is steel carbon fiber oh come from as well yeah okay how does that work so it's a I understand how you can bolt on fenders how does one do the car it's actually a bonded on skin it's an overlay obviously the steel roof is cut out and you're left with the internal structure of the a and B pillars and it's a carbon cap and what is our weight saving over this standard 911 it's what's that much give or take options okay yeah tell me about the brakes so we're running this is a 993 twin turbo brake system on this car Steel Brakes we offer a carbon ceramic package as well this particular one is not but it's that aftermarket is that Porsche no this is Porsche okay yeah this is so it's Porsche breaking you're only driver aid in the car happens to be a ABS right it's connected to this runs our öhlins TTX suspension developed by psi up in Northern California and this sort of pewter type finish what do you call this that's milky nickel milky yeah yeah it's like a stripper to store me down I'm opening act mickey nickel yeah okay so I like that though I like that so yeah it's a bit of a signature on a lot of our restorations this looks obviously much later yes well it was a little bit of inspiration from the early ducktail right cars we wanted to keep it as a movable and retractable wing like the nine six four nine 93 series had so it's a bit of an homage to the early car okay let's see before we get to the end let's open the front and show people what we have in their grasp sorry and obviously the car the car have air conditioning as well of course yeah well everything is beautifully done the center-field fuel tank is actually an FIA rated fuel cell we do offer in the state of California carbon emissions legal package which this tank qualifies as not only fi a legal cell but a carb legal cell as well I'd like to thank you have the same number of threads throwing on each bolt that's it's in the details but it seems very German yeah what do we have here what those are just actually close out brackets they they hold the AC condensers Oh headlight buckets on okay to the side of the car okay and obviously you get to your clutch fluid and what no no I want to hear yep I see this yeah this peels back and then under the little compartment in the front here you there's the ABS pump and brain and you have the battery as well okay the most people open the hood and fill with the tank or repents how brave you are right side hose yeah dragging that hose over the top seems well after the first or second time it becomes pretty easy just luminescent paint is right now what is this color we call it lunar silver okay I mean is it your own color it's a inspirational color from another manufacturer okay how hard is it to match paint on carbon fiber with paint on aluminum of steel is is that tricky or is it just paint it just covers the same surface no also we use a process developed by sickens for us so all of our vehicles are painted using sickens paint they have helped us over the past few years develop a system that actually does it lays flat and properly across both substrates gotcha gotcha cool okay this just closes yeah just a nice gentle okay is that the standard wiper that's actually a 993 setup okay we modify the cowl we bring it to 99 three spec so that standard nine six four had the wipers spread apart more right and then in 99 three it's one of the trademarks and we felt that it was a neat carryover and what year is this courage isn't ninety one it's a ninety one so this is pre airbag yes yeah yeah okay let's move to the back here let's when I was a kid one of my pet peeves with Porsche was you'd open the hood of a Cobra and they'd be the Webber's and the valve covers and said Cobra I mean there was a visual impact looking in it and when you'd open a early partial just you just kind of really couldn't see anything whereas this is beautifully done I love this finish here this sort of satin fit what is this off of that's actually off of a what are called gt3 ok 7rf GT ok all right so a little mix and match yeah we heavily massaged it to kind of make it our own that's the standard fan or different that is a standard fan usually the throttle body service poke to us they are made for us by Kinsler fuel injection oh sure they're very good yeah well you know I had an old Maserati if you only ejected one everybody always converts them to Weber's but I was determined to to make this work and we send it to Kinsler and they did a wonderful job they did a really good job great great suppliers ours said pink bill racing engine they built they built all the engines for us these days in every singer restoration right we've got a great relationship going with the team over there I love the fact that it's a proper Road car it's not just some silly track vehicle I mean it's got air conditioning you can actually go someplace in it and drive it I mean some of these cars are so track oriented now that it's it's just uncomfortable on the road you know it's just not absolutely fun absolutely this is just beautiful now is this one of these deals is going to Saudi Arabia are going to Germany or no this cars gonna stay stateside it's actually going to Alabama Alabama Wow yes well that's good to know very cool I know it all the more of these restorations we do it's really fascinating to see where they wind up in the world very cool I'm just just beautifully done these bumpers are they start as carbon fiber bumperettes we got it to each bumper and then they're sent out for nickel plating you can nickel plate carbon fiber our supplier claims they can nickel plate an apple if we gave it to them really yes we've yet to take them up on that challenge yeah okay so they cease to function as bumpers at this point imagine if you bump a carbon fiber bumper it ceases to be yeah a mother okay alright but that's okay because no one's gonna bump into this now with the four liter when you take it out to four liter do you have to increase the oil capacity no we run the same oil the same capacity we did increase the cooler size though okay over a few generations of moving to the four liter we definitely found especially since a lot of these vehicles are going to other climates where it's like much warmer than Southern California even though it's hard to imagine sometime yeah and I tell me about this stock usually there's a louvers on MAGIX well okay the louvers replace it with the early style grill which is what the early cars had and a lot of people would put mesh behind there we decided to go okay gotcha gotcha okay I noticed on the carpets this single one hundred this is the only car they can say that yes let's take a look at the interior now tell me about this what color is this interior this is it's a blackberry blackberry yeah now I've never seen blackberry so I don't really know is that a common color you've done before is this unique to this car this is pretty unique to this car we have done other cars that are similar this is quite unique to this well all singers are similar but none of the same right exactly yeah this particular car has our eight way touring seat option in it okay it's a we call it a sweet mix leather we've actually so you have a standard leather mixed with a slave whoa whoa Ventoux gether right and of course you kept the standard dashboard or gauges which so it takes three sets of gauges to actually make our gauge package our standard gauge package what you see here it does follow the same layout as well that's what I like because it it looks like Porsche so many cars come here that have been modified that I'm in it I'm Karmen again because there's nothing on it that I'm identifying with you know we didn't want to at the wheel we wanted to just distill it enhance what Porsche did so great but you did change the wheel and that's it what's real with that that's a formal prototype okay very nice wheel wrap to our specifications that are in our own weather now I'll check you on your porsche history why is the key on that side for LeMond stars oh very good yeah because you could turn the key and put your hand on that at the same time very good that's very good tell me about this trick Mara I like this I just assumed this was one of these I got to roll down the window and then press the glass with my thumb that's a designed and it singer oh very nice well that's that's really quite clever so you drill a hole in the glass and you have a rubber gasket on left side yeah yeah we actually have the glass made for us so it comes to us with a hole in it already right that's another composite piece that starts out as a plastic substrate and is nickel-plated oh that's really cool if someone came to you and said oh I sell about 100 car I want exactly the same car would you not do it or would you have to call the owner and ask permission how's that work yeah exactly we tried to offer alternatives well I mean that's what makes this really unique I mean it's the 100th one which is very cool and it's a proper Road car that's is what I love about you could drive this across country I I do not recognize the center console is that unique to you yeah it's it's it's fabricated for us okay and trimmed in so that is not Porsche either no okay but it's nice the way it's the handbrake is it gets cut in there yeah yeah little place to keep your changes yeah yeah okey it's just just beautiful can we take it from right of course let's give it a shot well it smells fantastic in here fresh leather have you increase the red line about an additional thousand and what was Porsches main reason to varnavat water cool man just run out of the limit of horsepower and emissions and it was a big one noice the air-cooled engines a bit noisy inherently horsepowers well I think he'd the more fuel you start putting into it the more of the emissions come up and what are you getting within about 390 yeah every engine they dyno within about 3 horsepower of each other so we try how many hours you run these on a dyno before you approximately 24 hours so then the owner can pretty much get it at dry the desk chuckles about two miles doesn't it kind of try set out of her what's the highest mileage thing you've seen you've been to ten years yeah I've got a car the UK that just turned over 8,500 miles 8,500 yep I wish I would say that's probably up there on the higher range of the over ten years no no he say he's had that car about four years oh so what I mean the highest anybody in the hundred and fifty thousand but no no nobody had died I'd argue you say that kind of like McLaren yeah I've got great is there legal reason you keep steel doors we do offer carbon doors there's a side impact beam in the door okay I think it's more of a safety thing yeah so 91 had this the door impact beams yeah yeah how many poor the dick silk bill between 90 and 94 I've heard worldwide numbers between 3040 thousand I don't know the exact number but not much and you run out I think we're just dipping our toe into the pool of all the partial market seems have cooled a bit so you can pick up some yeah I think there's a bit the magic for two it seems to love plateaued is the right word maybe stabilized a bit you know that I think the the entire air-cooled market spiked like crazy how many cars you got in the hopper weight we go there's a hundred thirty after this you have 130 ready to go well orders coming up yeah I mean positive yeah yeah car you know various stages I guess about 230 on the books right now wow that's amazing so what's the next milestone 150 or 200 150 will be a big milestone I think you know [Music] my first car was 2008 yeah we started in 2008 debuted the first that was the quail about a year and later well I love the gearbox the shifting is just sublime it really is it's so much fun just to go through it because there's no point that ever hang up or you have to give it an extra push it adds to the the visceral sensation I think of driving yeah becoming one with the fact that there's a trailing arm two feet from your butt back there yeah you know you really you begin to feel the connection to the to the road well I switch scars so often it it takes a while to get into the Porsche mindset yes you know I mean it's just a different and then okay I got it now you know I find them to be very easy car to get comfortable with though yeah yeah this feels extremely rigid how much more bracing be doing the chassis much not much no there's a strut brace in the front and there's some there's a moderate amount of seam welding done but that's to kind of customer specification then the nine six for platinum platform was inherently stiff much stiffer than the previous generation three two Carreras there was one of the reasons we decided to go with the 964 platform and when a carbon-fibre offender gets it you just replace the whole fender or can it be in carbon fiber would be repaired like fiberglass it can be repaired yes yeah it depends on the severity of each of the head in most cases I would say it's probably more cost-effective just released and one is a carbon-fiber fender way I think the carbon fiber fenders around 10 pounds right at the most yeah and the steel fenders what about 35 yeah I've got 35 amazing Porsches are never cramped you could be the Oh at 6-3 yeah I'm six-three there's like no problem there for what appears at first to be a small cockpit it's a tie and quite spacious what are your maintenance requirements for these motors is it the same as any partial owner yeah more or less you know we recommend 3,500 miles on the oil change unless under you know track conditions or something well we'll tell you to judge well a little bit after each track day valve adjustments at about 10,000 miles well I just love this gearbox it's really fantastic tell me about the steering rack we run a 993 steering rack so the 964 has a great steering rack the 993 we felt was better it takes away a little bit of the numbness on Center that's still air-cooled or yeah it was the last of the air-cooled that went to about 198 99 98 yes yeah you know the interesting thing about the AIRC World Series 911 the generations of it is that you know all the way from 64 to 98 there's a lot of parts that are interchangeable right without too much fuss you can you can slam a three six out of a 993 into a 66 911 without you know reinventing the wheel Tim thank you know the owner of this car is waiting at the garage for us so obviously we have to be down it to hard but yeah it certainly could it's feels bulletproof it's wonderful to drive it really is the son of the best expression of the whole air-cooled Porsche thing is if it's almost infinite if they were still making this car this is what it would be I think it's fair to say yeah proposed to 400 horsepower 2,600 just the best shifting transmission boy driven in a long time and of course does the leather in the smell of a custom wheel in the whole deal of you got the little detail this is really really amazing Tim thank you very much and congratulations on their hundredth vehicle that's really really exciting it's really a testament Chris there are there a few businesses harder than the carpet you know yes and and it's so much fun to see huge manufacturers diploma and you have McLaren you have tesslar then I'm a small skin you got you guys and a few other people and you're going business or in the car business now is a manufacturer and I think that's really really exciting to see so congratulations to singer and happy Anniversary and I think the new owners gonna love this car thanks Jay mommy that'll crack it up before you know I got to keep driving this thing see you guys next week [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 1,223,665

Rating: 4.9137554 out of 5

Keywords: Reimagined, Porsche 911, air-cooled, boxer, Rob Dickinson, Thomas Trissl, Trissl Sports Cars, Singer Vehicle Design, ed pink, racing engine, 964, 4.0L, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: yKEv192iRqo

Length: 26min 7sec (1567 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 07 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Dahyno]

That is in my opinion the most beautiful car ever built. And it's depressing because it will never be attainable.

[u/Gasifiedgap]

They’re beautiful cars, but they’re more a 911 tribute band than a 911.

I’ve said it before, classic Porsches became famous for being cheap performers. This million dollar classic 911 trend is just absurd.

[u/eff50]

The thing about Singers are that they are already in the 'garage queen' status. They are like expensive art, too beautiful to spoil them by driving it too much.

My idea of the perfect Classic 911 would be to buy something like an Carerra 3.2 with the G50, full to the bareshell resto, juice up the interior with some nice bits like vintage instrument clocks, a Blaupunkt Bremen and some nice leather. Then throw in a 3.8 engine from Porsche specialists like Ninemeister. They are good for 320-350 bhp. Keep the post impact-bumper look and not back-date it.

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[u/Shadow703793]

I really hope Jay does a video on the Singer DLS.

[u/onetimerone]

I know most will disagree and that I'm old but I cannot see ever needing more torque and HP for street usage than my stock Spyder came from the factory with, I'm with Jay on the otherwise wearing handcuffs scenario.

[u/BunnyTiger23]

They make beautiful cars From what I see they seem to go for about 500 thousand

How much would it cost to buy one and restore it on your own?

[u/ddroidd]

Road and Track ran a beautifully written account of Singer's "Dynamics and Lightweight Study" recently. Well worth reading: https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a23390765/porsche-911-reimagined-by-singer-dynamics-lightweighting-study/

[u/APARSH_]

So clean! JAY has all the cool toys!

[u/GiveMeAMuffin]

Gorgeous vehicle for sure but I think I’d rather just have a nice stock 964 example with maybe a few touches. 95% of the joy at 90% less money.