Ruf doesn’t build Porsches

Founded way back in 1939, and rising to fame in the 1980s with its high-performance Porsche-based CTR “Yellowbird” Ruf has been building gorgeous and fast machines for decades. While much of what the company has built is based on Porsche chassis, for decades it stripped everything down to its component parts and engineered every single piece to look and perform better than anything that left the Porsche factory. Famously, you may recall, Ruf is classified as a manufacturer in Germany, issuing its own VINs for cars built under its engineering prowess.

A while back, with the launch of three new related models, Ruf can now say that it builds cars which do not use a single Porsche component. While the SCR, CTR Anniversary, and Rodeo all appear on the surface to be based on 80s and 90s Porsche models, they don’t actually share anything. These are all Ruf all the time, from the ground up. Not only are the flat six engines totally Ruf-made parts, but they come in two varieties. You can get a Ruf with a four-liter naturally aspirated engine making 510 horsepower, or a twin-turbocharged 3.6 liter making 700!

Clearly everything is Porsche-inspired, but you won’t find a single Porsche part number in the bunch. The chassis is a brand new carbon tub bonded to a high-strength steel rollover structure. With race-inspired inboard suspension and the highest quality components money can buy, Ruf’s bespoke models are incredibly high-tech while still looking like they’re straight out of the eighties.

The CTR Anniversary harkens back to the original Yellowbird, but brings everything up to modern tech. The SCR is a uniquely aggressive throwback, basically the naturally aspirated version of the CTR Anniversary with a 500 horsepower four-liter. The Rodeo is the four-wheel-drive “safari” version of this carbon chassis Ruf, and it can be ordered with either the turbo motor or the NA version.

Obviously Ruf still builds on Porsche’s perfection with the ostensibly 987 Cayman-based mid-engine hypercar CTR3, and the Turbo Florio, which combines 991 Turbo power output with a Targa chassis. I genuinely look forward to seeing what Ruf can build from the 992 chassis in the coming years. But for now, there isn’t a Ruf more impressive than its wholly-built CTR Anniversary, if you ask me.