How Singer Remixes a Porsche 911 for $500,000

I’m accustomed to signing paperwork before driving a car, with fine print concerning insurance coverage and admonitions about road-tripping to Juárez. But before I drive Virginia, the latest creation from Singer Vehicle Design, the paperwork and pinkie-swears concern the terminology I’ll use when referring to the car: this is “a Porsche 911 that has been restored by Singer Vehicle Design.” Got it? Nothing else. The Germans, it seems, will drop the legal hammer with a quickness on any company that entangles its brand with Porsche’s, even when that company celebrates and glorifies the 911 with cars like Virginia, here. Singer founder Rob Dickinson — former lead singer of the band Catherine Wheel, hence the name —doesn’t take it personally. “I think they appreciate what we do,” he says, noting that the car before us wears both Singer and Porsche badges. “But they’ve got to beat everyone with the same stick.”

With that out of the way, we turn to the car, which is named for the state in which it’s soon destined to reside. What Dickinson does, essentially, is pair his favorite air-cooled 911 — the 1989-1994 964 generation — with carbon-fiber bodywork evoking an early 1970s car. Virginia, under the skin, is a 1990 Carrera 2, its matching-numbers 3.6-liter flat six punched out to 3.8 liters and fettled by Cosworth to produce around 360 hp. But the car looks sort of like a re-imagined 1972 Carrera RS.

Every detail of the car reflects a consideration of how to achieve a particular aesthetic, a vision of the perfect 911. Pop the rear deck to peer at the engine, and you find that the bulkhead is upholstered in flame-retardant quilted leather. Yes, Virginia, your engine compartment is upholstered like the seats on a Bentley Mulsanne. Naturally, I have to ask: What kind of money are we talking, here? “If you gave me a half-million dollars,” says Dickinson, “there wouldn’t be much change back.”

That thought is weighing on me heavily as we set off from the Ingram Collection in Durham, N.C. Rory Ingram and his father, Bob, are the biggest Porsche guys this side of Seinfeld or Stuttgart, and Rory leads the way in a silver Carrera GT — selected for a drive mainly because it was parked in front of the door, while the 918 Spyder was boxed in by a couple other equally outrageous machines.