DIAMOND IN THE RUF
The development of a 469bhp 911-based highperformance sports car is hardly what you’d expect to come from a company founded in 1939 as a general all-service garage, before going on to become a fuel filling station and bus company after the Second World War drew to a close, yet the limited production CTR ‘Yellowbird’ rolling out of RUF’s Pfaffenhausen workshop in 1987 set the motoring world alight with its highly tuned version of the Carrera 3.2’s flat-six, enlarged to almost 3.4-litres of displacement and equipped with twin turbochargers. For many outside Porsche circles, this was the first time the RUF name had been brought to their attention. It would leave a lasting impression — the five-speed, rear-wheel drive, air-cooled CTR, riding on five-spoke Speedlines and Bilstein uprated dampers, outperformed the decade’s most famous supercars, including Ferrari’s Testarossa and F40, the Lamborghini Countach and, worryingly for Porsche, the mighty 959. Furthermore, the CTR held the unofficial lap record at the Nordschleife for many years. This bright yellow coupe may have been given a cuddly nickname, but Alois Ruf Jr had created a monster.
The CTR was quickly dubbed the world’s fastest production sports car, status achieved thanks to its maker’s classification as a manufacturer by the German government. In essence, RUF takes unmarked Porsche bodies, which are then used to build entirely new cars. Free of Porsche chassis numbers, RUF vehicles are assembled using the Pfaffenhausen concern’s own parts and materials. Despite bringing the company name to the fore, however, the
