Outlaws, restomods and reimaginings: how the air-cooled 911 became the most modified classic

On March 31, 1998, Porsche built its last air-cooled 911, a Riviera Blue Carrera 4S that went to Jerry Seinfeld (Wikipedia). That car closed a 34-year run, and it also started a clock. This piece covers how the cars built in those years turned into the most worked-over classic on the market, from garage outlaws to half-million-dollar reimaginings.

One shape for 34 years

The air-cooled 911 is easy to modify because Porsche barely changed the shell. The prototype appeared as the 901 at the Frankfurt show on September 12, 1963, and production started as the 911 in September 1964 after Peugeot objected to the name (Wikipedia).

From there Porsche grew the flat-six instead of redrawing the car. It went to 2.2 liters in 1970, 2.4 in 1972, 2.7 for the 1973 Carrera RS, 3.0 for the 911 SC, and 3.2 for the 1984 Carrera (Wikipedia). The 964 arrived in late 1989 and the 993 ran from 1994 to 1998.

That matters for builders. A late 3.2 Carrera or a 964 shares its basic roof and door profile with a 1960s car. Swap the bumpers, fenders and hood, and you can make a 1980s car look like a 1973 one. Parts interchange well enough that engines, gearboxes and suspension move between generations.

Volume helped too. Porsche sold 58,914 911 SCs and 76,473 3.2 Carreras (Wikipedia). Those plentiful, cheaper cars became the raw material.

The outlaws came first

The word "outlaw" came from Porsche's other classic, the 356. Rod Emory and his father started modifying 356s in the late 1980s, when the accepted thing was to keep them factory-correct (Classic Driver). Fog lights, hood straps and lowered suspension were enough to raise eyebrows.

Emory told Classic Driver that friends "who would come by the shop used to call us outlaws." The name stuck. A friend drew a badge using the eagle from a German five-mark coin, and by 2015 Emory Motorsports had built about 150 cars.

The outlaw idea crossed to the 911 quickly. It meant a car that looked period, drove better and ignored concours rules. Stripped interiors, bigger engines, louder exhausts and RS-style ducktails all fit.

Magnus Walker made that look famous. Born in Sheffield in 1967, he moved to the US at 19 and built a clothing label called Serious before turning to Porsches (Wikipedia). His 1971 911 T, known as "277," became the best-known car in his collection. The short film Urban Outlaw premiered at the 2012 Raindance Film Festival, and his 2014 TEDx talk has passed 9.5 million views. Nike even released an SB Dunk based on 277 in 2021.

Walker's cars weren't the most expensive or the most engineered. What he did was show a lot of people that a scruffy, modified 911 could be cooler than a perfect one.

Backdating: the bread-and-butter build

Most modified air-cooled 911s are backdates, not Singers. A backdate turns a later car into a version of an earlier one, and the classic recipe is a 911 SC or 3.2 Carrera dressed as a 1973 Carrera RS 2.7 (Stuttcars).

Stuttcars looked at two real examples. One started as a 1985 Carrera coupe, kept its 3.2-liter engine and 915 five-speed, and gained a longer metal hood, new front fenders and RS-style bumpers. The other ran a 964 engine taken out to 3.8 liters, twin turbos and a 993 six-speed.

Prices for finished backdates sit well below the boutique cars. Stuttcars reports one selling for $178,000 on Bring a Trailer and the twin-turbo car for $230,000 in 2020. The same piece notes that labor rates at air-cooled specialists have climbed a lot over the past decade.

That's the economics of the scene. Builders can still find a 3.2 Carrera as a donor. Nobody is cutting up a real 1973 RS, which Porsche made only 1,580 of.

Singer and the reimagined 911

Singer took the backdate and pushed it into a different price bracket. Rob Dickinson, formerly the singer and guitarist of the band Catherine Wheel, founded Singer Vehicle Design in Los Angeles in 2009 (Wikipedia).

The core product is a 964-based coupe or Targa, sold as the "Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer" and later called the Classic Study. It gets carbon-fiber body panels, the long hood of an early car, and an engine reworked by firms such as Cosworth, Ed Pink Racing Engines or Williams. Prices start above $475,000, and some cars have sold at auction for well over $1 million (Wikipedia).

The details are the point. The tachometer reads to 11 as a nod to This Is Spinal Tap, although the redline is 7,200 rpm.

Singer then went further. The Dynamics and Lightweighting Study, shown in 2018, was developed with Williams Advanced Engineering and a chassis and engine program that involved veteran Porsche engineer Hans Mezger. The DLS Turbo, presented in June 2023, uses a 3.8-liter twin-turbo flat-six making over 700 hp, with production limited to 99 cars (Wikipedia).

Not everything went smoothly. Singer's off-road All-terrain Competition Study, built with Richard Tuthill and priced above $1 million, drew a branding objection from Porsche in March 2021, and Singer pulled it from its site (Wikipedia).

The 993 restomod: Gunther Werks

Gunther Werks applied the same thinking to the last air-cooled generation. Its 400R starts with a 993 and reskins it in carbon fiber, widened by six inches (Rennlist).

The engine is a 4.0-liter flat-six from Rothsport Racing. PistonHeads lists it at 438 hp and 315 lb-ft, with an unladen weight of 1,211 kg (about 2,670 lb). Rennlist quotes 430 hp. The price was $525,000 before the donor car, and Gunther Werks planned 25.

PistonHeads tester Kyle Fortune called it "a lighter sharper, more focussed car than any 993 I've ever driven."

Why it keeps growing

Three things push air-cooled 911s toward modification rather than preservation. The shell is consistent enough to reshape. Later donors are common enough to cut up without guilt. And original cars got expensive, so a modified car is often the only way to get the early look with modern reliability.

There's also a feedback loop. Singer's prices made a $200,000 backdate look sensible. Outlaw builds made a non-original car socially acceptable. Each layer made the next one easier to sell.

The purists haven't gone away. But the argument has shifted from "should you modify one" to "which era should it look like."

Where to see them

1. Luftgekühlt, the air-cooled show started in 2014 by racer Patrick Long and artist Howie Idelson, is the easiest place to see outlaws and backdates side by side. It began at Deus Ex Machina in Venice, California, and drew thousands by its fourth edition (Hagerty).
2. Bring a Trailer's Porsche listings show what backdates and restomods actually sell for, with photos and comments from people who know the cars.
3. Singer and Gunther Werks publish their build programs on their own sites, which is the quickest way to see what each change costs in practice.
4. Watch Urban Outlaw for the Magnus Walker side of the story.
5. If you want to build one, start with a 3.2 Carrera with clean paperwork. It's the most common backdate donor for a reason.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Porsche 911 (classic))
• Wikipedia: Porsche 993
• Wikipedia: Singer Vehicle Design
• Wikipedia: Magnus Walker
• Classic Driver: Outlaws, the anarchic Porsche 356s of Emory Motorsports
• Stuttcars: Is going backward the way forward?
• Rennlist: Guntherwerks 400R is 993 with everything set to max
• PistonHeads: Gunther Werks 400R review
• Hagerty: After only 4 shows, Luftgekühlt is already a must-attend

Featured image: Porsche 911 Carrera 2 Reimagined by Singer (964, 1990) by Charles (CC0). Source