Singer's New DLS Turbo： Wildest 911 Restomod Ever! ｜ 4K

This is Singer's DLS Turbo, and it's got a very cool party trick. So let's start with that, shall we? How about that? From road to race in about an hour, actually. But you wanted to see underneath it, didn't you? So let's rewind. We'll get on to driving the DLS Turbo, both on road with the ducktail back end, track wearing that outrageous loop rear wing. Ha ha ha ha! What a thing! Let's go. But in this film we're also going to show you around every detail of the stunning cabin. Yeah we're going to be quite happy moving this around I think. Interview the men behind the car. There's no oh what are we going to do next moment. And yes skid it about a bit. Oh, my God. But right now we're going to have a deep dive into the car itself to show you all the good bits. So here we are with the car all undressed and ready for us to go and have a good inspect of but we're not going to start there. We're going to start over here where as you can see everything is laid out for us because if you buy a DLS turbo you can choose to have it in road mode or track mode or if you want to you can have both and if you do that and pay the extra money you get a whole load of flight cases with the other bits in them. So we can now have a good inspect. We've got all the bits together so we can sort of see, show you the differences between them. So here we have the road front bumper, which you can see it looks big. You've got a lot of airflow into here and you've got a shallow splitter here. Nice and rubberized so it isn't scuffed and stuff. And then here you've got the track. Bumper and as you can see already it's much deeper at the front splitter to help improve Balance out the aero and then you've got a lot more intakes up here as well Now that you need to balance out the aero because look at the difference in the two rear wings. There's your ducktail And this absolute monster here of the loop rear wing, which is also manually adjustable for downforce angle. So I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, tell you what, it'd be quite fun. I could put the road bumper with my track rear wing. You can't. The car's too clever for you. It thinks you might do that. And if you try and mix and match, the car won't start. There you go. Simple, isn't it? That's you done. And then we come over here and you also get... Two sets of wheels and tyres. So, they're all magnesium. Those are your road wheels, and these ones here are your track wheels, like an old-fashioned BBS-style 70s wheel. Very cool indeed. Right, back over here. For the DLS Turbo, this is where it's all about. So the standard DLS, the old DLS, had a four-litre naturally-aspirated engine. Now we're down, shorter stroke, 3.8. With big turbos on it and the turbos this engine bay is so tightly packaged I mean look you can see how little space there is in here the turbos are out in the wings they're right out kept away because the biggest problem that they had with this car was the packaging and the cooling of it so with the DLS it was an air-cooled engine they kept it as pure as they could like that this one they've had to go to water-cooled heads still four valve heads Keep the turbos out of the way, get the heat cooling in through that, and then the central fan, which on the DLS was belt driven from the car, is now electrically driven and it pulls the air down through the engine, so you've got all of this stuff. going on in here and then just the flat six tucked right down there. I mean proper engine though it's 710 horsepower, 750 newton meters of torque at four and a half thousand rpm. It revs, it peak power is like eight, it revs to over nine. I mean this is gonna feel pretty good on the road isn't it. And then gearbox in there, six-speed manual we like a bit of that don't we. This time it's done by Ricardo, it was a Hewland box for the DLS. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time. The change was needed because of the turbo's massive extra torque, getting on for double the DLSs, plus there's a Sachs clutch capable of handling 1300Nm. Every intake is maximised either for cooling or getting air into the engine, and the exhausts, well, like the TVR Sagaris, remember that, they exit out the side. But when you come into here, you've still got a traditional Porsche. This is, I mean, it is still a Porsche 911. You've still got a trailing arm rear axle in there. And yes, you've got beautiful bits of componentry. You've got Brembo's top level carbon ceramic brakes, dampers by XTC, the same people who did them for the, for the regular DLS as well. And then we'll walk further down the car, but just look at the size of everything. It's an absolute monster. There is a 911 tucked under here you can still see the shape and then you've got these monstrous great side pods on it i mean it's like a foot wider at either side oh don't trip over anything that'd be helpful wouldn't it and then down here you've got the same as the dls it is set up similarly the changes they've had to make to all of this is mainly because you've got a lot of weight distribution difference. The car's heavier than a DLS and it's got more of that weight is at the back now than at the front. But you've still got, like the DLS, double wishbone front suspension and then all the other trick bits going on in there. which include dampers with remote adjustment and enough extra strengthening to the chassis to make it almost twice as rigid as the regular DLS and four times stiffer than an original 964 and also the other thing it's lost It's got no luggage space under here at all. The DLS did. This doesn't. It's just, they've had to give it all over to cooling. So just like Porsche's current GT3 RS, where they lost their luggage space, Singer has had to do the same thing in modifying this old 911 to make it the same. I mean, the length they've gone to here, it's just unbelievable, isn't it? Enough indoor stuff, let's get the DLS Turbo out into the open. This is more like it, isn't it? Look at this, look at the scenery out here, the road, nice and twisty. And then the DLS T, I mean, what a preposterously hunky car that is. It's all arch, isn't it? It's fabulously good looking. I do like the way they've mated the orange detailing here to match the road surface, pretty much. But look at this, right, first thing, OK, just the way That door opens and closes. Love it. Right, shall we? Love this. Right now, before we get going, I want to give you the full sort of guided tour to the Singer's Cabin because like the exterior, this interior, it's just, it's so perfect in the way because it is an old Porsche 911, so it's super simple in here and you can have these super ornate with, you know, tartan and gold leaf and whatever else you want. This one though is just sporty, it's just dark and simple and clean. I don't know how I'd spec mine I think I'd probably go a little bit more than this but not overly more still detectably an old 911 in here the windscreen feels quite upright and close to you the steering's just here it's very slightly offset and the pedals are just lovely and down the footwell but the um the steering would be nice if it had a bit of adjustment it doesn't but I'm pretty happy as it is and then you've got just these some of the old 911 bits this The tactility of the window winder, I suspect it has taken them quite a long time to get that action right on the window winder. And it's just an indicator of the efforts that Singer go to when they're modifying one of these to make it perfect. And then you've got the old style 911 bits here, so you've got the heating controls and again they are so tactile in the way they operate here. And then a little row of four buttons which is like your demister, your nose lift, the hazard lights and the rear fog. And then apart from that you've got a mode dial here and the mode dial is quite cool. It uses the last binnacle here and you've got five different modes from weather, normal, sport track and then everything off and that's quite cool. It's been developed by Bosch so they really know what they're on about. And then the gear lever which just feels yeah we're going to be quite happy moving this around I think. Yeah it feels pretty good. And exposed linkage look at that Wicked, right. I think we're going to fire it up and get going. Wow. Yeah, that sounds pretty good. I think we should have a go. Wait, no, no. I can do this better. If I turn off, I need to start it with the door open. And if I go with the ignition on, go into sport mode. So I just need to turn it. So I get into sport mode like that. Then I start it with the door open. Ho, ho, ha! That's more like it. How good does that sound? Yeah, if you start it in sport mode, You get the baffles open on the exhaust straight away. Right, off we go. And how good does that sound? This doesn't feel like a DLS. The DLS is very light and nimble and accurate and very high rev. This feels like a heavier car in some ways. It's still light. It's, what, 1,350 kilos. But you're aware of there's a difference in the balance of it because there's less weight on the front and more on the back. More turbos, loads more cooling in the back. The weight distribution's moved backwards and that means that you've got quite a lot going on back there. And if you close the throttle mid-corner, ooh, you do notice it. That's it. Yeah, you feel it move offline and just go, yep, I'm an old 911 still. I will. But the experience they were going for was F40, Ferrari F40. That's the car they had in mind while they were developing it. Because, yeah, I don't think turbos have ever been more exciting than that. So yeah the experience they wanted was classic turbocharged Ferrari. High boost, manual car, lots of excitement but better drivability. They didn't want it to feel like all or nothing and really a bit scary. So the most impressive thing for me I think is the engine response because even when you're driving around at mid-range, mid-throttle, not doing too much. As soon as you get on the throttle there is amazing response and then normally turbocharged cars then have a pause for breath as they gather themselves before they punch and yet this, it just doesn't. So if I slow it down, look, down at sort of two and a half thousand revs and I've got amazing response just through my foot and then I get on it, there's no girding of the loins, it just goes. That engine response, the management of that is absolutely exceptional I think, but there is a bit of weight in the experience, I like that, I like the fact, because it is a heavier, more boisterous car than a regular DLS, it feels very different to drive, the engine noise is more guttural, there's a lot more weight in the steering and the pedals, it It does flow down a road, but sort of, it just wants to tear it apart. The front, you can tell it's old 911 and it bobbles around a little bit, but the damping, especially at the back where it's got more weight to deal with, just feels so perfectly sorted. So what's the main takeaway here? Well it's just the whole car's sense of occasion, this sort of astonishing sort of richness and texture to the experience that you just you don't get in modern cars and in a way it's because of the car's deficiencies. This is still a car on trailing arm rear suspension and you have To be slightly cautious with it, you can't just take liberties with it all the time, especially with this sledgehammer of power and the weight distribution out the back. So you might not end up traveling that fast in it, it just doesn't matter because the sense of occasion to driving it is just, it's so rich and so rewarding. To drive, you can kid yourself that you're driving a narrow car, that you're driving a classic 911 and it's all dainty and little, and then you look in your rear-view mirror and all you've got is arch. You can't go trying to snaffle apexes when the back wheels are going to be in the ditch. Let's go. I mean, I just can't imagine this is going to be any better to drive on a track than it is out here. But I don't have to imagine that. Time to let the DLS Turbo loose in full track spec, including that massive rear wing. And for that, we headed over to Willow Springs Race Circuit. Check it. Turbo at Willow Springs then. A very different Willow Springs to how I've ever seen it before in that there's... Been quite a lot of rain today and the track is still well it doesn't really do runoff and drainage here because hey they don't get much rain but anyway shall we have a little look and see what the DLS turbo's like. So it's got all the ingredients to be a complete monster. It's got the weight distribution of a mallet, it's got enormous 345 width rear tyres, And fairly skinny 265s at the front, and it's got 710 horsepower and 750 newton meters of torque, pushing about 1,350 kilos. It's, I mean, it's a recipe to absolutely bite your arm off, isn't it? All right. However, this is Singer we're talking about, and I think it's always, you get with Singer, Sometimes you just think, I bet it's all about the cosmetics and... Everything else and you sort of take it for granted a bit that you're just looking at a very pretty Porsche and yet you're really not. This thing is a very serious and very engaging driver's car. And listen to how it sounds. It's really guttural and deep this noise. Nice. You do have to manage it though, if you're just... Not trying to get too greedy with the throttle early in the corner, it will just understeer out the other side. It will understeer on the way in if you don't keep that nose pressured all the way to the apex. But it's a proper old school 911, don't forget that. It's on trailing arm suspension and when you get a bit busy with it, it will have you. And the clutch is a little bit fighty. This one is a development car and it's worked really hard in its time. The way it rides all these bumps and things around here, and these edges and the cambers and the curbs, it's really impressive. And, oh, the brakes are fantastic, floor hinge pedals, all the weighting of everything. There's just a lovely flow to it. All right, let's see if we can do a little bit of a skid down here, shall we? You shouldn't be able to do this in a... 700 horsepower, 964, should you? Ha, ha, ha, ha! What a thing! I'm starting to speak now. And this is the secret to this DLS turbo, that it's this huge, scary thing, and yet, when you start tickling it, it's not that scary. It's got all the teeth and the intimidation factor of it, but when you properly get on it, You discover that it's actually really friendly. The engine management is like the suspension, where you think, oh, I think this is gonna just eat me alive, and then it doesn't. And the engine's the same. You've got the way you can roll on and off the throttle, and it'll adjust the line so intimately, and yet you've also got such good roll-on performance. So when you come out of a corner and there's no lag, there's no delay, no nothing, it just eats the ground, it's chugging. I mean this is proper big boy performance. Looks like it starts to bring you out in a sweat, it's like proper adrenaline rush. Look at that, look at it go, bloody love it. I'm a bit blown away by it and I know that Singer and other restomods don't have to obey the same rules as big manufacturers building cars from scratch with all the legislation but once again just like with the Lancia 037 that we gave our performance car of the year to you wonder where cars are going wrong and you can see it clearly because you get in stuff like this which is so exciting so enthralling so busy when you're driving it. And this is what you want. This is it. Gosh, it's a shame you've got to pay three million quid nearly to have it, isn't it? Okay. Oh, it's got so much shove. I love it. All right. Singer is going to convert 99 old 964s to DLS turbo specification. The average cost of which is around 2.9 million dollars. Want the flight cases? Of course you do! Depending on paint and finish, that'll be roughly another 175 thousand dollars. Just don't forget the loop spoiler isn't road legal in many countries, including the UK. But it is a faithful, sympathetic nod back to Porsche's race history, specifically the 9-3-4-5 racer that was so successful in the late 70s. If you love old Porsches for their honest simplicity and purity, you are probably going to hate this. This is a Porsche 911 turned up to, well, 11. It's pumped, it's daft, it's OTT, and it's very different from the regular DLS. Make what you will of the way it looks and whether you think Singer has gone too far with it, but to drive, it is addictive. You think it's going to be as ferocious and scary as an old Le Mans car, But actually... It's just a big, friendly monster. But what about the men behind the machine? We sat down with Chief Strategy Officer Maz Fawaz and founder Rob Dickinson to get their take on where the company is now. Okay fellas, we'll come on to talk about why we seem to be sat in a cocktail bar at a racetrack, but first of all, I want to know how much more can you do with a 964? We've had Classic Studies, DLS Turbo, now we've got Carrera Coupe and Cabrio. Yeah. What else can you do with the 964? Good question, very good question. Quite a bit actually. I mean, I mean, as with... I think as we've gone through the last, what was it, 17 years? 16, 17 years of figuring this car out. As you say, we've touched, we've gone here, we've gone there, we've gone there. As you can imagine, a huge amount of learning has come from that. And as we know, the nuance of cars is where the magic is. And there are areas that we haven't touched yet and that we're exploring that are still honoring the 964. But I don't think we've quite put that. Over word curated, I don't think we've curated every single meaningful group of stuff together in terms of refinements, lightweight, performance, agility, ability to go a long way in the car without getting annoyed with it. Yeah. Um. Yeah. So we are... I've been changing my mind a little bit. Yeah. Giving that some thought, and of course we're thinking about things Um. Um. Right. ... Yeah. a little bit further along as well, so we are aware, ... Yeah. ... but there is an abundance of ideas, let's put it that way. Yeah. ... ... Yeah. So you're not sure of ideas. How far ahead do you plan? ... Yeah. ... Oh goodness. Now we're about six years out. Yeah. ... Yeah. ... Yeah. Yeah. ... And in terms of sales now, how many have you built? Six hundred ... hundred 600 600 cars and you're now building them at quite a rate you've built 150 cars last year yeah the plan so this year so '26 the plan is almost 180 really we're sold out for for four years over four years i think what's worth perhaps stressing is that there's no what are we going to do next no yes there's so much that me and him want to do and there's so much that uh we think I mean, and we're well aware of potential... Singer fatigue as well, a little bit, you know, 9-11 fatigue from us because we keep... But do you not get bored of just thinking about 9-6-4s? Do you not think we ought to do a 9-2-8 or we ought to go for another brand? Do you take yourself out there somewhere else? No, we are keeping ourselves thoroughly stimulated by thinking about other things. Let's put it that way. Well, the other thing is we learn so much. So when you go through these. iterations and we are our capabilities increase and improve you just you learn new tricks and new there's new opportunities that show up in the middle of doing this one well we could apply something to the next one so you're almost continuously developing the next thing and you know it's a matter of experience and you're making new friends and you're getting wonderful opportunities to drive other people's cars and you think oh what about So there's lots of, we have quite a lot of opportunities, as you can imagine, and we are investigating them all with massive enthusiasm, and we're like kids in a candy store, we don't know how we've kind of got here, but people take us a little bit seriously, you know, and that opens doors for us to satisfy our ambitions and the cars that we want on our Our driveway and that is. Me and him, that's the way Singer has to operate, unfortunately, or fortunately. It seems we've gone quite well so far, but we're making cars for ourselves. Yeah. And it's Porsche, right? I mean, I think for us, it was always Porsche writ big and Singer writ small, where for most others, it's look how great we are. We just happen to be working with a Porsche 911 because that's what... That's what Singer do, or whatever. Yeah. I didn't start this company to start a restomod company. I started this company to celebrate Porsche's heritage, full stop, through the Porsche 911, which I had fallen in love with in various moments in my life. And I knew in my heart that if I could only have one car, it would have to be a very special Porsche 911. That is not, that doesn't seem to be the... Dare I say it, honourable, principled starting point for a lot of new companies that have sprung up. I think they've seen a business opportunity. I'm not a businessman. I didn't set this company up to be a businessman. Maz is shaking his head. Slowly, for a lot of reasons, I became friends with him. But it was just because I had to do it. And now there's an industry. And probably we're somewhat part of causing that, which is fantastic. Does that feel good? Well, we don't like being called Restomodders, I'll put it that way. But of course, that's what we are. Yeah. Because Rest, you know, restored, reimagined, reborn. Reimagined. It's become the term, hasn't it? Yeah. That was, I dreamt that up in 2007. Restored, reimagined. I thought, that's brilliant. That absolutely gets to the point of what we're doing. And now it's become this term which seems everyone's reimagining things on, which is great, terrific. But we do see ourselves, and again, not wanting to sound too bloody pompous, singer is a philosophy. It's a philosophy of if it ain't going to be the best, we're not going to bother to do it. We strive to do something extremely well. In every corner of the car, this everything is important thing, which I scrawled on the wall years ago, I keep, I keep. battling with that because it's a very silly phrase in some ways but in some ways it does get to the marrow of the bone as to what the headspace that me and him are in where it has to be spectacular it just has to be magnificent everywhere and if we can't pick up the phone and persuade the right people to help us be magnificent because we cannot do it on our own yeah and put the right teams together we won't bother and that is a philosophy and that we've We've applied that heavily to the most important sports car in the world. And it's gone quite well. Can that philosophy go elsewhere? Of course it can. And you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know, well, if those two guys have got that kind of head space, and they're thinking about things so clearly, my god, the world's in this fabulous moment we have in car culture at the moment, where it's revolutionary, it's electric. Is it electric? Is it not? Is it this? Is it digital? Is it analog? What a fantastic time to be alive and passionate about cars. And what an enormous opportunity me and Maz have to take this thing that was started somewhat by accident, and take it to the moon, you know, and then that's the goal. Just to create fabulous s**t that we all desperately want. Yeah, so okay, outside of cars then, last year you bought Willow Springs Racetrack, in partnership. In partnership, yeah. So what's the plan here? What was the thinking of you? Purchasing a racetrack or being involved in a racetrack. Bringing Southern California a racetrack was sort of top of the list. Of course, our opportunity at the track is in there as well that we have our own facility. Thank You know, a house and garage and lifts and so on. So we can go and, you know, he and I can go drive. you Our team can bring, you know, customers, we can sort of, you know, Bring Singer to the circuit in a permanent way is on that. very And then, of course, there's a whole, of course, much broader business plan around it, much. which is smart business, obviously. And as part of that, then, you're going to have to build a load of infrastructure here, buildings and lounges and stuff like the one we're in. Is Singer going to get involved in design aesthetics? Are you going to do furniture design? Architecture? What's next? Well, we certainly have an opinion as you can imagine, but no, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, no. No. Are you going to be the critic, which is still saying yes or no? I think we'll both stand out, we'll stand to one side and let people who are experts in it And it suggests things and will probably. Curate. Yeah, that's an overused word, isn't it? But no, I don't think so. I just don't have the bandwidth, to be honest with you. Could my design department expand? Yes, it could. Do I want it to? Not really. What's it mean to you that Goodwood has come and said, you're going to be the featured mark this year? Bonkers. Yeah. I'm just startling it. It's like, It's like a bit of imposter syndrome a little bit, but whatever we have become and whatever we are has been a huge part, Goodwood has been a huge part of it, so in that way it's quite appropriate, but to be on the sculpture with all the people who have been on it before is just kind of humbling really, and I hope we can get away with it. Excellent. Rob, Maz, thank you both very much. That's been really good.