01 July 2022
Ruf has been around since the 1950s. They are most famously known from the late 1970s and early 1980s for their SCR, BTR, and CTR.
Ruf Automobile GmbH is a German car manufacturer. The company manufactures vehicles using unmarked Porsche chassis, known explicitly as bodies in white. By looking at the VIN it is possible to distinguish between Porsche manufactured cars and Ruf cars. A Ruf VIN starts with ‘W09’ whilst a Porsche VIN starts with ‘WP’.
It is a less well-known fact that Ruf has only focussed on Porsche since the 1970s; before that, Alois Ruf Senior evaluated and researched the improvement of motor cars in the late 1940s. Apparently, he constructed a tour bus in 1955 and owned a bus company.
The transformation to solely Porsche occurred in the 1970s when Alois Ruf Junior took over the reins.
In the late 70s, Porsche indicated that they would drop the rear-engined, air-cooled 911 in favour of a liquid-cooled front-engined Porsche, the 928. Ruf saw an opportunity and decided to build their own 911, a tuned version of the Porshe 930.
Then the revolution happened; in 1987, Ruf built a ‘Porsche’, the CTR, lovingly known as ‘Yellowbird’, built on a modified chassis of a Carrera. It was the world’s fastest car, including competition from the Ferrari Testarossa, Lamborghini Countach, Lamborghini Diablo, Porsche 959, and Ferrari F40. There were only 20 Yellowbirds built.
Road & Track christened CTR, ‘Yellowbird’.
Alois Ruf described the new CTR as a ‘car that you wear.’
In 2017, Ruf created another ‘Yellowbird.’
Of course, Porshe didn’t drop the 911 and concentrate on the 928. Subsequently, both Porsche and Ruf have produced some of the finest sports cars the world has ever experienced.