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According to legend, Singer vehicle design Founder and Executive Chairman Rob Dickinson was still a young boy when his father first pointed out a Porsche 911 to him. He fell in love immediately. Dickinson turned that passion into a multi-million dollar business, reinventing classic Porsche models with his own twist.
To be clear: Singer is not sponsored, approved, endorsed by, or in any way associated or connected with Porsche. Customers bring their own 911 to the Singer store – not just any old 911, but an air-cooled 964 version model from 1989-1994 – for a complete makeover. The cars are completely disassembled and modified around the original chassis with a process driven by Singer’s obsessive attention to detail.
Every part, every bolt, every little thing is evaluated and lovingly recreated. Dickinson started Singer to recreate the classic 911 with modern science, while keeping the essence of the car and making it better.
“Ten years ago I scribbled ‘Everything Matters’ on a wall,” Dickinson says. “It all has to be treated with the same degree of excess. This is part of what our customers love: that it’s crazy. It is the most important sports car in the world and that is why I chose the 911 as the lens through which the Singer brand operates.”
For all its engineering advances and technology, here’s the surprise: Ultimately, the car is analog. That means no touchscreens and no self-driving coding. It’s true to the era and intensely focused on creating a perfect vehicle, not a cyborg knockoff.
Re-creation of a cultural German icon
Named in part after Norbert Singer, who began his career as a racing engineer in Porsche’s development department in 1970, the Singer Group now has more than 600 employees in California and the United Kingdom. The 300e Redesigned through Singer’s Classic restoration services division, the Porsche 911 was completed in February 2024, with unrelenting demand with no end in sight.
“Whether you love the Porsche 911 or not, it is a culturally significant icon with millions and millions of loyal fans,” Dickinson emphasizes. “Perhaps wisely or unwisely, we have introduced ourselves by suggesting that we should reimagine this spectacular icon of a car and imagine it better than when it started. And a little more relevant to the modern world.”
A customer works with Singer and chooses menu items to create the car they want within the boundaries Singer sets. It may be equipped with a normally aspirated or a turbocharged engine. These may include bodies reminiscent of the early 911 F model first introduced in the early 1960s, or the later 911 G model, or even a specific Porsche racing car, all based on the 964.
These cars are not recreations or continuations; they are also not simply restored. To repeat a classic ’70s TV show, these Singer rebuilt supercars look like the Six Million Dollar Man: They can rebuild it. They have the technology. They can make it better than it was. Better, stronger, faster. One Singer-redesigned Porsche 911 may not cost you six million dollars, but it will approach a million or more. And that’s because of Singer’s fixation on perfection.
From start to finish, a Singer project can take about 10 months once the process begins, and the company has a long line out the door, says Maz Fawaz, the company’s CEO. Customers who approach Singer today may get their car back within three years after it has gone through the gauntlet of disassembly and reassembly guided by a group of experts in their field. On the engineering side, Fawaz says, there are a large number of Singer employees with motorsport experience, including F1, who understand materials science.
Taking a 911 apart to put it back together, better, stronger and technically perfect
The first step – disassembly – takes place outside of Singer’s pristine factory floor in Torrance, California. Especially because it is extremely dirty work.
“Imagine taking a car from 1990,” Fawaz explains. “It’s old and generally very dirty. Normally the donor cars have high mileage and are not expensive.”
A donor car is blasted to remove dirt and paint down to bare metal, then given a rust-resistant coating before being transported to the Singer location. The team then repairs and strengthens the chassis using seam welding. They then remove the body panels and replace them with lighter, stronger carbon fiber panels. The car has been effectively restyled and redesigned. Finally, it is painted and given a full “shakedown” to check for squeaks and rattles.
From a design perspective, the Singer store is technologically advanced and combines analog methods. The team will both create a full-scale clay model and use Autodesk Alias, the surfacing software used around the world for automotive design. Singer uses modern milling techniques to cut from clay and build hard models before handing the baton to the engineers. The shop also showcases artisanal skills in painting and upholstering the cars, which involves wrapping the cars in leather. It ranges from advanced rapid prototyping and computer software to very old-fashioned ways of doing things. Whatever it takes to get the job done, Dickinson says.
“We start with a very specific 911, then deconstruct it and make the cars lighter, stiffer and more beautiful than ever,” says Fawaz. “We use a lot of carbon fiber, aluminum and titanium, and we optimize casting performance without resorting to expensive models.”
For all their high-tech tools and materials, Singer designers put these vehicles together more like a high-end watchmaker puts together a timepiece. “We treat the paint, leather and upholstery the same way we treat jewelry, not a car,” says Dickinson. “When we started, we built one or two cars a year. Now we are on the cutting edge, proving that a restoration company can scale itself.”
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