Ruf CTR

In short

• Built by Ruf Automobile, Pfaffenhausen, 1987–1996: 29 complete cars plus about 20–30 conversions.
• 3,367 cc twin-turbo flat-six: 345 kW (469 PS) at 5,950 rpm and 553 Nm at 5,100 rpm; most cars tested above that.
• Road & Track, April 1987: 340 km/h; auto motor und sport at Nardò, 1988: 342 km/h.
• Price at the end of 1987: US$142,900.

Ruf CTR at a glance: maker, production years (1987–1996), purpose

Development and production history

Ruf had built tuned Porsches since 1975; its first complete model was the 1977 Turbo 3.3. For the CTR, Ruf chose the naturally aspirated 911 Carrera 3.2 of 1987 rather than the 930 Turbo, because the Carrera was slightly lighter and had a lower drag coefficient. The CTR name abbreviates "Group C Turbo Ruf".

The car became famous in April 1987 at the Road & Track "World's Fastest Cars" contest, where it reached 340 km/h and was called the fastest production car in the world. In 1988 auto motor und sport measured 342 km/h on the Nardò ring, with an unofficial run of 346 km/h. Ruf built 29 cars from new Porsche bodies until 1996, while about 20–30 more were converted from Carreras that customers brought in. The price varied with the route a buyer chose: ordered directly from Ruf, a CTR cost US$142,900 at the end of 1987.

Design and engineering

The body looks close to a standard 911 but is lighter. The doors, bonnet and engine cover are aluminium, saving about 200 kg against the factory car, and the bumpers are plastic (English Wikipedia names fibreglass in one place and polyurethane in another). Drag-reduction work changed the details. Ducts in the rear wings feed the intercoolers, and the rear arches are slightly wider for the larger wheels. Because the intercooler sits at the side, Ruf moved the oil tank forward and fitted a side-mounted oil filler.

The car runs on 17-inch Ruf Speedline alloy wheels with 215/45 ZR17 tyres at the front and 255/40 ZR17 at the rear, and stops with a Brembo system with 330 mm discs. The tyres were Dunlop Denloc performance tyres, a type designed to stay on the rim after a puncture.

Engine and drivetrain: 3.4-litre twin-turbo

Ruf bored the Carrera's 3,164 cc engine out to 3,367 cc (98 mm bore, 74.4 mm stroke) and added two turbochargers. It is a single-overhead-cam flat-six with two valves per cylinder and a compression ratio of 7.5:1, fed by an uprated DME injection system originally designed for the Porsche 962. The rated output is 345 kW (469 PS) at 5,950 rpm and 553 Nm at 5,100 rpm, with a 6,800 rpm limit. English Wikipedia says that figure was the lowest dyno reading among CTRs tested, and that the average was closer to 368 kW (500 PS) or more.

Power goes to the rear wheels through Ruf's own five-speed manual gearbox, which gave the company free choice of ratios; a six-speed was optional. With 345 kW and 1,150 kg, the CTR has 300 kW per tonne. The power-to-weight calculator compares that with modern supercars.

Ruf CTR specifications and test results

No 0–100 km/h figure is given in the sources used here.

Variants and derivatives: CTR2, CTR3 and the 2017 CTR

The new CTR was unveiled at the 87th Geneva Motor Show in March 2017, 30 years after the original. It has a water-cooled 3.6-litre twin-turbo flat-six with 880 Nm, a six-speed manual gearbox and rear-wheel drive, weighs 1,200 kg dry and reaches 100 km/h in under 3.5 seconds. Production was limited to 50 cars. Ruf's later range also included the RGT (2000–2011) and the Rt 12 (2004–2012), both based on Porsche 911 generations, and in 2018 the SCR, a naturally aspirated car with 375 kW (510 PS) on Ruf's own body and chassis.

In service: the Nürburgring film and the legacy

The CTR held the unofficial lap record of the Nürburgring Nordschleife for several years. Ruf's test driver Stefan Roser was filmed on his laps, and Ruf released the footage as "Faszination on the Nürburgring". The film, around 20 minutes long, is published on Ruf's own YouTube channel as "RUF Faszination". The CTR also made Ruf known to a much wider audience: because of its manufacturer status, Ruf cars appeared in many racing video games in place of licensed Porsches.

Preservation and collecting today

With 29 complete cars and about 20–30 conversions, the original CTR was always a very small series. Buyers should know which kind of car they are looking at: a CTR built by Ruf from a new Porsche body, or a customer's Carrera converted by Ruf. No reliable public price data in euros was found for this article, so no market values are given.

Which CTR-family car to choose:

• For the original: one of the 29 Ruf-built CTRs on the Carrera 3.2.
• For the 993 generation: the CTR2.
• For Ruf's own engineering: the mid-engined CTR3 or the 2017 CTR.

More fast cars of the period are in the 1980s classics and the classic cars section; Ruf models are listed in the Ruf catalogue.

Photo gallery