Writer/photographer Ian Kuah says the Ruf CTR2 is the first road car he's found that is quite fast enough, thank you.
Two hundred and thirteen mph. Even today that's a big number for a street-legal car you can drive to the office. It was even bigger back in 1987, when the best shots from Ferrari and Lamborghini were around 190 and even Porsche's vaunted 959 could barely clear 200. So when a narrow-bodied 911 tunercar called the Ruf CTR "Yellow Bird" blew all the established exotics away, Alois Ruf-a Porsche specialist from a small village southwest of Munich-found himself squarely in the limelight.
Despite a then-incredible pricetag of more than $160,000 the CTR soon earned a small but steady clientele. Ruf went on to make more than two dozen brand-new turnkeys over the next half decade, quitting only when the pre-993 bodyshell became unavailable and new emissions regs frustrated the engine. From then on CTRs had to be built from customers' existing cars, making them exempt from new-car legislation.
But in the end there just had to be a second-generation CTR-something capable of topping the first car's performance while also being refined, driveable, and cleared for safety and emissions all over the world.
Work began just over two years ago, and right from the start Alois Ruf decided that this son-of-CTR also had to look different from its forebear. Ruf's cars have traditionally been very conservative with their visual mods, following the form-follows-function edict and limiting obvious alterations to lower suspensions, wider wheels, and subtle spoilers. If a wing had to be fit over a new set of intercoolers, for example, it would be an original Porsche piece.
In the last few years Ruf has begun offering more noticeable external mods, but all changes must still be justified on functional grounds. Therefore while the CTR2 is the first Ruf to look dramatically different from a production Porsche, each additional intake and every new inch of bodywork is there for a good reason. The result is a butch, purposeful design that still passes the most discriminating taste tests-and a car that feels rock-solid on the road at 215 mph!
Inner Beauty
The best man to explain the inner workings of the CTR2 is Joe Huber, the chief development engineer at Ruf. "Our goal was to start with a bare shell and build a car that could outperform the original CTR, conform to all current worldwide safety legislation, and meet America's 49-state emission standards," he explains. That Ruf has succeeded is a brilliant achievement, especially considering its small size and limited resources.
The new model is particularly advanced aerodynamically. While the first CTR body was created by common sense and rule of thumb, more scientific methods were used this time. "Ultimately, it's an issue of stability and low drag at 220 mph versus cooling requirements," Joe goes on. "Grobe, a company which makes gliders and Porsche flat-6 engines for airships and light aircraft, is just five kilometers away. It has a small wind tunnel, and we used this for testing the spoilers and airflow efficiency. Grobe also has very sophisticated computer programs which helped us refine the position and shape of the various intakes and spoilers."
At the front, a deep airdam (made from composites, as are the rocker panels and rear decklid) not only hides the oil-, a/c-, and brake-cooling hardware but also aerodynamically balance the nose, helping the CTR2 achieve zero lift at 185+ mph. The 993 chassis' flat bottom also aids the aero figures as do the new Ruf mirrors, which create much less drag than the factory units but boast the same glass area.
The suspension is uprated with Ruf-tweaked Eibach springs, Bilstein shocks, and large antiroll bars. A sturdy alloy strut brace stiffens the front of the steel unibody while the interior's integrated rollcage does similar duty on the center of the shell. Very light forged-magnesium OZ wheels (19x8.5 and 19x10 inches) are mated to special 245/35ZR19 and 285/30ZR19 Dunlop SP8000s. These gigantic alloys also make room for the 15.0- and 13.0-inch vented carbon discs, which give greater stopping power and less unsprung weight than their metal equivalents. These dinner-plate-sized rotors are clamped by racing-grade 4-piston alloy calipers.
In the engine room Ruf has based its ultimate power unit on Porsche's twin-plug, 3600cc flat-6. I asked Alois Ruf why he didn't go with the huskier 3.8, and the answer proved typically logical. "With turbocharging, 200cc doesn't make that much difference. On the other hand, the added cylinder-wall thickness of the 3.6 helps durability." Twin KKK turbochargers are used with an 8.0:1 compression ratio, and the CTR2's TAGtronic engine-management system naturally includes electronic boost control. A reinforced steel crank and uprated conrods are fit during blueprinting and hand-assembly, and every complete power unit is plumbed into Ruf's Superflow 901 dyno for running in, fine adjustment, and durability testing before installation. These and other tweaks add up to a formidable 520 horsepower @ 5800 rpm and 439 lbs.-ft. of torque @ 4800.
At 3045 pounds the CTR2 is no lightweight, but it's also no heavier than a stock Carrera 4-this despite having a/c, leather Recaros, and electric windows. (The car's composite panels and light-alloy wheels make up for the luxuries.) On that basis, the near doubling of engine output drops the power-to-weight ratio to 5.9 lbs./bhp, an awesome number for a road car. A CTR2 Lightweight will even be available later, Alois Ruf insists, and it will weigh just this side of a ton and a half.
Blast Off
The last few Rufs I've tested have used the excellent EKS clutchless transmission, but this particular example didn't. (Sachs is still working on an actuator that can take the staggering power and torque of this engine.) On the other hand, pedaling the CTR2 around with a 6-speed manual is the most natural thing in the world.
For a start, this car is so easy to drive that when breezing along on light throttle openings you might as well be in a standard Carrera. Drop into sixth at 30 mph and the car pulls smoothly, albeit not very energetically, from 1000 revs up. This is the same sort of party trick you can play with a stock 911 or Ferrari F355, but such tractability is very rare in monstrously powerful tunercars.
On the other hand, drop the hammer in first gear with a few thousand revs and the CTR2 accelerates so hard that it feels like it's flirting with a wheelie. The 0-60 dash disappears amidst a cloud of smoking rubber in just 3.8 seconds, and the g-forces almost keep you from shifting up. This is turbo power at its best.
But standing-start runs-nice as they may be for pub talk!-aren't what truly fast cars are all about. Fast cars are about warping time, about covering ground at a pace that leaves ordinary exotica breathless, and here the CTR2 has no peer. With 2500 rpm on the tach in any gear, a mere caress of the throttle makes it lunge forward like an Olympic athlete about to reach the finish line. Dig deeper into the progressive throttle and you'll discover the engine has only been breathing lightly.
When it does take in great swallows of air, the forces that jet pilots and F1 drivers experience are suddenly yours for the taking. Fast driving on public roads is something you can only do in short bursts, for left to its own devices the CTR2 will keep pulling until it's reached more than 218 mph. The number of cars that even approach this figure can be counted on one hand, and while all of them cost more than even the Ruf's $280,000, none can match its usable driving position, nimble size, day-to-day usefulness, and excellent outward visibility.
The CTR2 chosen for this test is based on Porsche's Carrera 2, not the heavier all-wheel-drive platform of the C4 or Turbo, so even under partial boost, squeezing on the power with any steering lock dialed in makes the back end squirm. This sensation isn't actually the rubber losing its purchase on the road so much as the rear suspension's many bushings being compressed. Once you know what's happening and get used to it there's no problem, but since Ruf will also build you a CTR2 based on the 911 C4, I'd say the AWD would be well worth the additional money and weight-particularly on wet pavement. Even in something like the 430-bhp 911GT2, rear-drive may seems fine; when you enter the 500-horsepower club AWD simply becomes the way to go.
My friends all know that after testing almost any road car I have a tendency to say it could use a few more horsepower. I've even considered the factory's 408-bhp 911 Turbo slow on occasion, though it can only be called that in the relative sense. Well, I've finally met my match: The Ruf CTR2 is, I think, quite fast enough!
The last few Rufs I've tested have used the excellent EKS clutchless transmission, but this particular example didn't. (Sachs is still working on an actuator that can take the staggering power and torque of this engine.) On the other hand, pedaling the CTR2 around with a 6-speed manual is the most natural thing in the world. 