FIRST DRIVES NEW CARS TESTED AND RATED

Built around Ruf’s proprietary new composite monocoque, this 911-alike combines old-world ingredients to mesmerising effect

TESTED 15.11.21, BAVARIA, GERMANY ON SALE NOW PRICE £770,000

Anyone who has seen that photo of Alfa Romeo’s 164 Procar – the famous one in profile, front and rear bodywork removed – already understands this new Ruf.

Only once the skin was detached from Alfa’s V10 silhouette racer of 1988 was it obvious that the thing had virtually nothing in common with the 164 family saloon, and it’s a similar story with the Ruf SCR.

Despite the aesthetic, it shares little with an old Porsche 911. How little? For one thing, it’s constructed, McLaren-style, around an 88kg composite tub of Ruf ’s own making. For another, the suspension is by double wishbones with pushrod actuation. There has been only one official 911 with both those elements and that’s the 911 GT1 with which Porsche won at Le Mans in 1988. The Ruf ’s deceptively small and lowslung body, including its X-rated hips and dinky ducktail spoiler, is also full carbonfibre, which is something no Zuffenhausen 911 has ever had.

So while it looks like a 911, albeit one more imaginatively conceived than most cars in Ruf ’s long back catalogue, the SCR is categorically no such thing. What it is instead is Alois Ruf Jr’s vision of what the ultimate rear-engined performance car might look like. Made in Pfaffenhausen, of course, and now on sale for £770,000. This is an expensive car, but the depth of development engineering is quite something. Plus, with Singer’s 964-based creations routinely selling for seven figures, you could argue the SCR’s asking price simply ref lects reality in this part of the market.