50 Years of 911s No.2---Ruf CTR 'Yellowbird'---Innocuous-Looking Monster.

211 mph. An impressive figure for any car today, but Three decades ago? A road car achieving that kind of speed was barely believable. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t till March 1987 that any road-legal car was claimed to have surpassed the 200 mph Milestone. That car was the Ferrari F40, and that 201 mph top speed made it the fastest car in the world. But it wouldn’t hold onto that record for long…

Its now 30 years since the Ruf CTR made its Grand Entrance into the world of Fame, and what better way to celebrate this by covering that car.

A few weeks later(after March 1987, of course), America’s Road and Track magazine arranged…A little get-together at Volkswagen’s Ehra-Lessien test track in Germany. Amongst the nine cars in attendance were a few representatives from the Supercar establishment, including a Testarossa(In red, obviously), a pair of 959s in Silver and White, with the White one being the stripped-out Sport version, and the Silver one the ‘Deluxe version’, and a Red 288 GTO, a couple(Two) of Koenig Turbo Porsches, in wild and only slightly wild form. One car was a sort of jawbreaker purple color with wide rear flares and a stunningly red leather interior; the other a more subdued blue with 935-style front bodywork, a Ruf 5-speed gearbox and a 520-bhp engine built by Reinhold Schmirler and Pierie Ofzky at RS Tuning. The purple car was supplied by tuner Willy Koenig’s Munich firm, and the blue car was Ofzky’s personal transportation. A Isdera Imperator 108i, a car cobbled together from bits of a 928, and then powered a Mercedes 5.6-litre V8 mated to a ZF-5-speed Transaxle, a steel-tube spaceframe and Fibreglass bodywork. An AMG Hammer, a 300E that had a 5.6-Litre V8 under the hood, with aerodynamic body panels and suspension work to create a 4-door family sedan with a pastime of hunting Porsches’ on the Autobahn….And then, the Ruf.

Painted a Canary hue and standing out from the other cars like a yellow raincoat(Hence the Yellowbird moniker) on a dark and rainy day (which that day, from the look of the sky, it was promising to be). This 911 Carrera 3.2-based car was the work of Alois Ruf, the charming gentleman whose Munich firm had turned out the fastest car(The BTR, I’d assume) in Road and Track’s last World’s Fastest story, with a top speed of 186 mph. Alois was rather widely respected for the quality and reliability of his products, and the Road and Track crew were therefore expecting good things out of his latest product.

This ‘product’, based on the Carrera 3.2 as opposed to the 930 Turbo due to the C-3.2’s slightly lower kerbweight and Coefficient of Drag(Due to it being a narrow-bodied car), was one that had its factory body panels, including the doors, hood and engine cover replaced with ones made of aluminium to knock a whopping 200 kilos off that kerbweight, along with binned rain gutters and smaller wing-mirrors to reduce drag, fiberglass front and rear bumpers and a pair of intake ducts on the rear flares to allow airflow to the intercoolers.

Along with that, was a completely new 5-Speed manual gearbox(Nobody thought about Auto’s for performance cars then). You see, the 930 had a 4-speed gearbox because that was the only street-legal gearbox they’d made thus far able to handle the Turbocharged engine’s high output, but the 3.2 had a 5-speed. Unable to modify the 5-speed to their satisfaction and evidently not content with 4 Forward gears, they decided to use a new gearbox of their own design on the CTR. This also gave them the freedom to customize the gear ratios however they wished. To ensure absolute control, an upgraded suspension system, 17 inch Ruf Speedline alloy wheels, 330 mm diameter Brembo brakes, and Dunlop’s Denloc performance tires were used.

But its main Party-Piece for me though…Was the engine. The 3.2 engine had now been bored out to 3.4-Litres, had Bosch Motronic fuel injection thrown at it, had its ignition set-up changed to the one originally designed for the 962 Racer, and also had a ‘Specifically designed’ pair of Turbochargers and intercoolers, all of which brought power output to 469 bhp and 408 lb-ft of Torque at 5950 RPM. The blow-off-valve’s sound was also rather curiously close to the chirp of a canary, which helped the ‘Yellowbird’ name stick.

Debuted at the end of 1987, and retailed at 223 000 a unit, though that’d vary if you’d ordered the car directly through Ruf or brought in a car for conversion, it was produced for 4 years, from ‘87 till ‘91, with 29 CTRs made from ‘Chassis’-In-White’ and around 20-30 from Customers’ Carreras’. Anyway, back to the Road and Track gathering.

The Countach was the one to do the first speed run, clocking a speed of 179 mph. Which was respectable.

The 959 Sport laid down a Top Speed of 198, which was also good. The Luxury(Or ‘Deluxe’, as they call it) had managed 197.
The Isdera Imperator, the car that looked utterly the most ‘80’s Sci-Fi-Like, had laid down a fairly respectable 176. Considering it looks to be as Aerodynamically Efficient as a Brick, with its designers probably focusing how insane the car looked at any speed, that wasn’t so bad.
Then, there was the AMG Hammer. A car that befuddled your senses for a simple reason: It is literally impossible to sit in that ‘normal’ 4-door passenger interior, then stare at the dash seeing that you’ve just passed 183 mph, and then justify what you are seeing on the speedometer in comparison with what you were feeling about your surroundings. Its just basically impossible.
The two Koenig R/S Turbos developed mechanical trouble (broken fan belt and a blown base gasket) on their first or second laps, but not before the blue Koenig/RS car got in one lap at 201 mph, second fastest of the day. The Ferrari GTO also managed just one lap (179 mph) before its black box cut the spark to one bank of cylinders. Unfortunate.
The Quattro turned in a creditable 154, and the same car(A BTR) that Ruf sent for 1984’s World Fastest story a blistering 187, a tick past its old record of 186.2.

But then….Came the monster of an semi-innocuous-looking Yellow Narrow-bodied 911. Paul Frere, the man strapped into the Drivers’ Seat, must have had cojones made of Kevlar or something, because by the first timing clock, the little Ruf had already run to 311.9 km/h—And still going, from a Standing Start. And as it came off the banking and exploded onto the Back Straight, the tachometer was showing 7000 RPM, and the speedo? 340 km/h. The journalist strapped into the Passenger’s Seat thought at that moment, and I’m not playing a fool here, ‘My God, these are Indy speeds’. The yellow Ruf pegged its 350-km/h speedometer and howled past the clocks with 336.1 showing on the board: 209 mph. Paul looked over at the reporter with a slightly manic grin and shouted over the earsplitting roar of the engine, “This is faster[fastest] than[that] I’ve ever gone in my life!”

Certainly Not the kind of thing you hear every day from a former Grand Prix driver and Le Mans winner who test drives every conceivable kind of car for a living, is it?

And later, with the track completely dry, the Yellow thing went even faster. On its last run of the afternoon, Phil Hill took photographer John Lamm out for a few laps and recorded a trap speed of 339.8 km/h, or 211 mph. That stood as the fastest speed of the day. It was crazy enough that they’d gone 25 mph quicker in the same type of car, from the same company, in just three years but then…
Alois, Phil, and Paul had all agreed that the car was ‘Undergeared’. “We could make it go faster,” Ruf even said, “but there’s not much purpose in a road car going very much faster than 300 kilometers per hour. But 300 kilo­ meters per hour is the magic speed in Europe. And in the U.S., 200 miles per hour is the important number, so we tried to go faster than that.”

And do exactly that, they did.
In short, on just its first outing alone, it’d taken out every single rival in attendance there top-speed wise, even the seemingly-mighty Ferraris. Hell, in just that outing, it’d basically just wiped the floor clean with anything and everything any mainstream manufacturer had to throw at it. And to rub salt in their wounds…..It’d be utterly shameful to know they just got beaten by a 911. A 911, for crying out loud. If you don’t understand what I’m getting at, I’ll lay it bare right here: A 911 of the Then…Shouldn’t really be quick in anyway, usually. Correct me if I’m wrong, but It’s was a bit more of a car for drivers’ who preferred to live on the edge, and especially the 930, not least because of its massive Turbo lag.

…And that’s about it. Pretty much all I currently have for the CTR Yellowbird. The 911 that somehow pulled off the impossible and took out pretty much anything and everything in just one, fell, swoop. Let me repeat that one more time, a 911, obliterated an F40. A 911—-I’ll stop now.

Feel free to leave more information, overlooked details, your thoughts on this machine, suggestions for either the next non-911-related article or ‘50 Years of 911s’ article down in the comments below, and I hoped you enjoyed it.

See you at the next one.

[Writers’ Note: So, if you’ve read till here again, then, well, Thanks for sticking around. And for long-time readers, that definitely goes to you too. So, we’re on our second installment of this series already, I hoped I did well with this. But the Car: To keep it short, alongside the 964 RS 002 ‘Touring’, this is probably my favorite 911 Ever. Of All Time. In a three-car garage consisting of a Lotus Carlton, and a 6R4 taking the first two slots, it’ll be real hard to pick between the Singer, GT3 RS 4.0, this Ruf, or the RS 002(Most of these we’ll cover soon) as to which fills my very last slot. But anyway, I’ll cut it short here before I might have a light fanboy moment, as I always seem to do with the Carlton….Which is odd.

Anyway, stay tuned for the next one, bound to come…Presumably next week, Leave whatever I’ve mentioned earlier down in the comments if needed, and if you’ll excuse me, I need to rest.

Hoped you Enjoyed it, and I’ll see you at the next one.

Thanks Again—-Joel.]

Oh yeah, again, try and guess what’s next. If you can correctly guess the Company and the car, I will fall of my chair.