CarBrandLogos archive · RUF · 1987

RUFCTR "Yellowbird"

A yellow twin-turbo Porsche from a Bavarian village that beat the world's fastest cars.

Photo: Norbert Aepli, Switzerland (User:Noebu) · CC BY 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in RUF history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the RUF CTR "Yellowbird", then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Alois Ruf's firm in Pfaffenhausen began as a garage and became, unusually, a recognised manufacturer in its own right, building cars with its own vehicle identification numbers rather than modifying Porsches. The CTR of 1987 was the car that made the distinction meaningful.

Ruf CTR Yellowbird interior · ducktail964 · CC BY 2.0

Design and engineering

It started with a narrow-body 911 shell, chosen deliberately over the wide Turbo body because it was slipperier. Ruf welded in a roll cage that stiffened the structure, removed the rain gutters and filled the seams, fitted aluminium panels, replaced the door mirrors and the bumpers with lighter items, and integrated the oil cooler ducts into the front. The engine was a 3,367cc twin-turbocharged flat-six with intercooling and Ruf's own management, driving through a five-speed manual gearbox of the firm's own design, in a car that weighed very little.

Ruf CTR Yellowbird RECARO seats · ducktail964 · CC BY 2.0

In production

Road and Track gathered the fastest production cars in the world at the Volkswagen test track at Ehra-Lessien that year, including the Porsche 959 and the Ferrari Testarossa, and the Ruf beat all of them, running past 210 mph. The magazine's photographs of a plain yellow 911 with holes drilled in the rear valance gave the car its name.

RUF CTR Yellowbird engine room · TTTNIS · Public domain

Legacy

What sealed it was a film. Ruf made a promotional video in which Stefan Roser drove the CTR around the Nurburgring Nordschleife in just over eight minutes, much of it visibly sideways, with the camera fixed on his hands and a running commentary of opposite lock. Faszination auf dem Nurburgring became one of the most watched pieces of car footage ever made, and the sight of an almost plain 911 being steered on the throttle through the Karussell defined what the car meant. It also made an argument about the machine itself: a short-wheelbase, rear-engined coupe with that much boost arriving that suddenly was genuinely difficult, and Roser was demonstrating not just the car's speed but the amount of skill it demanded.

Chapter 5

Twenty-nine were built from bare shells between 1987 and 1996, with a further number converted from customers' own cars, which is why the total is always given in two parts. The CTR2 followed in 1995 with all-wheel drive and the later 993 body, the mid-engined CTR3 arrived in 2007, and the CTR Anniversary of 2017 revived the original name and the yellow paint around a carbon-fibre monocoque of Ruf's own design. Values for the originals now sit alongside those of Porsche's own limited-run cars, and Ruf occupies a position no other firm in this business has managed, treated as a manufacturer by regulators and as a legitimate rival by the company whose parts it started with.

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Engine

3367 cc twin-turbocharged flat-6

Body

2-door coupé

Technical specification

The CTR "Yellowbird", in detail.

Production: 1987–1996 (29 built from scratch, rest converted from customer cars)
Class: Sports car (S)
Body style: 2-door coupé
Layout: Longitudinally-mounted, rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive
Engine: 3367 cc twin-turbocharged flat-6
Transmission: 5-speed manual
Assembly: Pfaffenhausen, Germany
Manufacturer: Ruf Automobile GmbH