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Restomod

Red Bull Technology and Singer Design

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There are restomods, and then there are Singer restomods—the kind that make you wonder whether Stuttgart’s original engineers would smile, cry, or quietly take notes. Now Singer Vehicle Design has taken its obsessive reimagining of the Porsche 964 to a new level by teaming up with Red Bull Advanced Technologies, the engineering skunkworks behind Formula 1–grade simulations and structural wizardry.

Yes, that Red Bull.

The goal? Fix the one thing vintage 911s have never been great at: rigidity—especially when the roof goes missing.

Singer’s customers are the sort of people who know exactly how a car should feel at 140 mph through a fast sweeper, and they aren’t shy about asking for more. “Our clients are some of the most demanding drivers in the world,” says Mazen Fawaz, Singer’s head of strategy. “To achieve the standards they expect, we only work with the best.”

So Singer called in the people who build race cars that survive 300-kph curbs.

Step One: Tear It Down to the Bone

Every Singer restoration starts the same way: total annihilation.

The donor Porsche 964 is stripped of everything—body panels, interior, suspension, drivetrain—until only a bare steel monocoque remains. What’s left looks more like an archaeological artifact than a car. That naked shell is then cleaned, inspected, and prepped for what amounts to structural surgery.

This is where Red Bull Advanced Technologies enters the picture.

Using high-resolution 3D scanning and old-school hand measurements, RBAT digitally recreates the entire 964 chassis in a virtual environment. Every seam, every weld, every curve of 1990s Porsche steel is mapped. But the real magic comes next.

Formula 1 Math Meets a 1990s 911

RBAT feeds that digital 964 into Finite Element Analysis software—the same kind of simulation used to determine whether a Formula 1 monocoque will survive a 200-mph crash. The software twists, bends, and loads the Porsche chassis in thousands of virtual scenarios, identifying exactly which areas are weakest, especially in Cabriolets and Targas, which lack the structural help of a fixed roof.

Then the engineers start reinforcing.

RBAT designed 13 bespoke carbon-fiber structures that integrate into key load-bearing areas of the 964’s steel chassis. These aren’t bolt-on braces or aftermarket roll cages—they are carefully engineered, bonded and joined during the restoration so they become part of the car’s skeleton.

The result? A 175 percent increase in torsional stiffness.

That number is not a typo.

According to Singer and Red Bull, the reinforced open-top cars now match the rigidity of a coupe—something Porsche engineers in the early ’90s could only dream about.

Why Rigidity Matters

Chassis stiffness isn’t something you brag about at car meets, but it’s the secret sauce behind everything that makes a car feel right.

A stiff chassis means more precise steering, more consistent suspension behavior, better braking stability, and fewer squeaks, rattles, and shudders over rough pavement. It also means the car feels calmer and more refined at speed, even when it’s being driven hard.

In other words, it makes a 30-year-old 911 feel like a modern performance car—without losing its analog soul.

Built for Singer’s Brutal Turbo Cars

This Red Bull–engineered structure was developed specifically for Singer’s latest tribute to the legendary mid-1970s 930 Turbo. These aren’t gentle classics. They pack between 456 and 517 horsepower, send it all to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual transmission, and now sit on a chassis that’s finally strong enough to handle that kind of punishment.

That means fewer compromises, even in a Cabriolet or Targa. Roof off. Throttle pinned. No flex. No drama.

The Ultimate 964

What Singer and Red Bull have done here is more than just reinforce a classic Porsche. They’ve solved one of its fundamental flaws using tools developed for modern motorsport.

It’s a fusion of old-school air-cooled character and bleeding-edge structural engineering—a 911 that looks like 1990 but behaves like 2026.

And if you think that sounds expensive, you’re right. But for Singer’s clientele, perfection is the only acceptable option.

Source: Singer Vehicle Design

News

Red Bull’s RB17 Hypercar Locks In Its Final Form—and It Looks Like a Weapon

Red Bull has never been subtle. This is the company that turned energy drinks into a Formula One dynasty and then decided that wasn’t ambitious enough. Now it’s building a hypercar. Not a “road car with track capability” hypercar, mind you, but a full-blown, track-only projectile designed with one overriding objective: go very, very fast.

We first saw the RB17 back in July 2024, a tantalizing preview of Red Bull Advanced Technologies’ first crack at a customer car. Today, the covers come off the finalized design ahead of its on-sale debut later this year—and the production-spec RB17 looks even more focused, more aggressive, and somehow more unhinged than the prototype that preceded it.

If the original RB17 hinted at Formula One DNA, the finished version shouts it through a carbon-fiber megaphone.

The front end is cleaner than before, but don’t mistake restraint for friendliness. Slim LED headlights are neatly integrated into sharply sculpted bodywork, and every surface appears to exist solely to manage airflow. There’s no decorative fluff here, no “design for design’s sake.” The RB17’s nose looks like it was shaped in a wind tunnel because, well, it probably was.

Move along the side profile and things get even more serious. Deep channels slice through the carbon bodywork, guiding air rearward toward massive cooling zones. The roof-mounted intake feeds the mid-mounted engine directly, while a towering central fin—clearly inspired by endurance racing prototypes—anchors the whole thing visually and aerodynamically. It’s the kind of fin that suggests the RB17 would feel right at home blasting down the Mulsanne Straight at 3 a.m.

Despite being strictly a track car, the RB17 does check a few boxes typically reserved for road-going hypercars. It has mirrors. It has a windshield wiper. Those details may sound mundane, but they signal something important: this isn’t a rolling concept or a design exercise. What you’re looking at is very close to what customers will actually receive.

Open the cockpit, and any lingering doubt disappears.

Red Bull has gone all-in on race-car minimalism. There are no touchscreens, no glossy infotainment panels, and no distractions masquerading as luxury. Instead, the cockpit is dominated by physical controls—real buttons, real switches, the good stuff. The seating position, steering wheel, and sightlines were all designed with lap times as the primary metric, not comfort on a cross-country drive that will never happen.

And then there’s the engine. Oh yes, the engine.

At the heart of the RB17 sits a naturally aspirated 4.5-liter V-10 developed by Cosworth, an engine builder with a résumé that reads like a greatest-hits album of motorsport. This one revs to a spine-tingling 15,000 rpm and produces roughly 1,000 horsepower on its own. An electric motor adds another 200 hp, bringing total output to a deeply unnecessary—and deeply wonderful—1,200 horsepower.

Power is sent exclusively to the rear wheels through a six-speed sequential gearbox, backed up by a hydraulically locking active limited-slip differential. Reverse gear? That’s handled by the hybrid system, because of course it is. Everything about this drivetrain screams purpose, efficiency, and total disregard for moderation.

Red Bull plans to build just 50 examples of the RB17, ensuring exclusivity is baked in from the start. Pricing hasn’t been announced, but let’s not kid ourselves—this is a well-over-seven-figure proposition aimed at collectors who already have garages full of rare machinery and still want something that feels truly special.

The RB17 is currently undergoing final testing, which suggests production is imminent. When it does arrive, it won’t be street legal, it won’t be practical, and it definitely won’t be subtle. But it will be fast in a way that feels almost rebellious in today’s era of downsized engines and digital everything.

Red Bull didn’t just build a hypercar. It built a statement—one that revs to 15,000 rpm and dares the rest of the automotive world to keep up.

Source: Red Bull Advanced Technologies via Top Gear

News

Luc Ackermann: The Man Who Jumped Physics

Physics teachers of the world, pack it up. Close the textbooks. Because Luc Ackermann, a German freestyle motocross rider with either titanium nerves or absolutely no sense of self-preservation, has just rewritten the rules of motion — using nothing more than a motorbike, two 31-metre trucks, and a nine-metre concrete wall.

Picture the scene. You’re on a motorway in North Rhine-Westphalia. Two massive juggernauts are trundling along at 20 km/h, side by side, like a pair of slightly bored elephants. On the back of one of them sits Ackermann, idling on his bike. He twists the throttle, rockets forward to 54 km/h, and with the sort of casual confidence most of us reserve for merging onto a slip road, he launches himself off the truck bed and into the air.

Now, let’s add up the maths. That’s a combined momentum of 74 km/h. Forty metres of flight. A 23-metre yawning gap between the trucks. And — just for fun — a nine-metre-high motorway barrier in the way. Oh, and mid-flight, Ackermann performs a Tsunami Backflip, because clearly hurling yourself across moving lorries isn’t quite enough unless you also look like you’re auditioning for Cirque du Soleil.

This wasn’t just blind lunacy. Behind the stunt was the sort of scientific planning usually reserved for rocket launches and Mars landings. Thomas Stöggl, head of global performance innovation at the Athlete Performance Center in Austria, calculated every variable: acceleration, takeoff angle, trajectory, aerodynamics, and even the wind. Essentially, he turned Ackermann into a flying maths problem. A very loud, very dangerous one.

And still, Ackermann didn’t use a speedometer. Nope. He just relied on instinct, experience, and the sort of timing that makes Swiss watches look sloppy. His brother Hannes, himself an FMX rider, gave him the launch signal. The truck drivers — Franz Reinthaler and Walter “Bill” Kranawendter — were tasked with keeping two 31-metre monsters perfectly aligned at a constant crawl. Which means while Ackermann was defying physics in the air, the men on the ground were performing motorway ballet.

The result? Perfection. Ackermann soared, flipped, cleared the wall, and landed on the second moving truck like he’d just popped down to Lidl for a loaf of bread. Then he promptly lost his mind in celebration, which is fair enough. After all, most of us get a rush just parallel-parking without scuffing the alloys.

What Ackermann achieved wasn’t just a stunt. It was a real-time equation: speed + trajectory + courage ÷ insanity. A problem that even Einstein would’ve looked at, shrugged, and said, “Ja, nein, that’s not possible.”

But Luc did it. He took science, sprinkled it with adrenaline, and flew it across the German autobahn. Which means one thing: gravity may be undefeated, but it’s certainly embarrassed.

Source: Red Bull