Good morning class, and welcome to today’s lesson: The torsional stiffness of Porsche’s 964 chassis! Singer—expert reimaginer of Porsche’s 964—has teamed up with Red Bull Advanced Technologies—the advanced technologies bit of Red Bull—to beef up the gorgeous cars it reimagines.
Why? “Our clients are some of the most discerning drivers in the world,” said Singer’s strategy boss Mazen Fawaz. “To achieve the standards they have come to expect, we work only with the best.
“The results underline the extraordinary lengths we go to in our relentless pursuit of excellence,” he added. We already know these lengths, now they’ve just got longer.
Though, let’s just quickly give those lengths a little recap. Whenever a 964 owner arrives at Singer and says “make it sparkle,” Singer promptly… disassembles the entire car. The interior is removed, the body and mechanical components are all taken out, and everything is stripped bare until just the chassis is left. At that point, it’s "painstakingly assessed, cleaned and prepped."
Then Red Bull Advanced Technologies joins the chat. Using its fancy tech, the 964 is digitally modelled, using scanned data and actual manual measurements.
Then the important bit: Something called ‘Finite Element Analysis’ software is used to calculate the torsional stiffness of the open-topped 964 variants—Cabrio and Targa—and then it is continually refined until it reveals which bits of the chassis are working the hardest.
You know what comes next. RBAT has developed 13 carbon fiber structures to give the hardworking chassis elements some help, and these are bonded to the chassis during the restoration process. The result? An increase in torsional stiffness of 175%.
And the real result? “This increased chassis rigidity benefits handling, braking and overall refinement, with the driving experience of the open-roofed cars now matching that of the coupe.”
This particular lesson has been developed specifically to teach Singer’s Classic Turbo cars, the ones built to pay homage to the 930 Turbo from the mid-’70s that get between 450-510hp, a six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive and now, a really beefy chassis.
NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
