Singer wants to build more 450bhp reimagined Safari 911s

Singer Vehicle Design, the company behind those delectable ‘reimagined’ 911s, has told Top Gear it wants to build more versions of the wild, safari-spec ‘All-terrain Competition Study’. In the ocean of modified 964-generation Porsche 911s then, this is a rare fish indeed. A Gulper Eel, if you like.

“It was commissioned by one of our fabulous clients as a kind of one-off,” boss Rob Dickinson said of the car we saw only last year. “We’re just making sense of how we could maybe build some more if anybody wants any more. It’s such a specialised thing.

“It was ostensibly from the get-go a one-off, and we weren’t necessarily going to show it to the world. But we did because we were all so proud of it, and we’re figuring out what to do. I’d like to think we will make some more,” he added.

Here’s hoping. Singer built two ACS models, in fact. The clearly very well-funded, mystery customer ordered the white car you see above for high-speed desert rallying, and a red one to complement it, “designed for high-speed, high-grip tarmac events”. Thankfully, he’s given his personal approval for future Singer customers to spec their own ACS cars in the same way.

As with everything Singer, the ACS started with a donor 964-gen 911 – plenty of those fish left to ‘reimagine’, don’t worry – with an air-cooled twin-turbo 3.6-litre flat-six kicking out a very respectable 450bhp. There’s permanent AWD, a five-speed sequential gearbox, long-travel suspension, a long-range fuel tank, two spare wheels and of course, a rollcage.

It looks fantastic, too. “It’s an enormously, extravagantly fabulous thing,” Dickinson said.

Could this extravagance extend to other Porsche 911 models, TG asks? “Not at the moment. We’re going to show something hopefully as exciting next year, and in 2024 there’s going to be something else. So we’ve got a lot of 911 celebrating still to do, probably all 964-based.

“But who knows, we’re figuring it out as we go along. We probably shouldn’t admit that, but we are,” he added.