We traveled to Ruf Automobile in the morning before went to BMW M and met Roland. We have called Ruf in advance so we were welcomed by Mrs. Ruf, because Mr Alois Ruf was on a business trip. We got a cup of coffee with sugar bags marked with the Ruf logo and the expression "The Pursuit of Perfection". So Stefan and I took just little of the sugar in our coffee because we suspected it would be just as strong as their cars...

Anyway, after a couple of minutes wait we were given an introduction of the company and a round tour of the factory which took us about one and a half hour discussing Porsches with Mrs. Ruf, who was an expert on subject.

But the best thing was the test drive of the Ruf CTR2 with 530 HP. It was quite fast, we went about 330 km/h on Autobahn...

No, in fact not we didn't get a test drive, maybe we should have shown up in the Ferrari F355 instead?

Ruf Automible was founded just before the second world war in 1939. Alois Ruf father made his living as a general service garage. Today it's in the same location, but larger. After the war, a difficult time for Germany, Alois father made his living on de-tuning the Volkswagen Typ 1 (the Beetle), so less fuel was used. Later on he began manufacturing buses, a little like Lamborghini that began manufacturing tractors and Alpina doing typewriters by the way...Later on became dealership for Fiat (!) and BMW. During the 60´s the younger Ruf, Alois, developed his own interest in serving and restoring Porsches.

Developments continued and Ruf became a milestone in sportscarhistory in 1987 when the US magazine Road & Track tested the Ruf CTR with 469 HP (Base 911 Carrera) in their "World's Fastest Supercar" article and the CTR, dubbed "the Yellow Bird" was the fastest among all of the with a top speed of 339,8 km/h (211 mph). This was an incredible speed in 1987, outperforming supercar classics such as Porsche 959 and Ferrari F40 and the CTR was street legal in the USA also, which weren´t the case with the F40 and 959.
 
 

The "Yellow Bird" Ruf CTR has problems with the traction on the
Nardo Racetrack because of it´s tremendous power output of 469 HP.

The latest evolution of Ruf is the CTR2. This one is based on the 993 chassis with the engine inspired by the magnificent Porsche 962 Group C Turbo, modified by Ruf. (The red letters indicate the initials of the CTR)

With it´s air cooled flat 6 producing 520 HP at 685 Nm the CTR2 has few peers, even among the elite supercars.
 
 
 
 
 

"The CTR2 is a car for the nineties and beyond, available and street legal in all countries in the world. There is every reason to believe that, before long, the Ruf CTR2 will inherit the lofty honor once created by the original CTR, The Worlds Fastest Supercar"
 
 

Quote from Ruf CTR2 Brochure

Ruf gets a brand new 911 Turbo from Porsche and strip it down to last detail. Here they work on the first coat of paint. These cars are more hand built than Aston Martin for example, here is everything done by hand. At Alpina I noticed that Alpina don't paint the Alpina colours (Metallic green and blue) by themselves, BMW Individual does the job for them.

This is the wide version of the CTR2. The aerodynamics of the wider version is not as good as the narrow one, consequently this one has a little lower top speed. Mrs. Ruf told us that the customer of this car arrived with his rental car from the airport and said quietly "Hmmm, instead of my Ruf CTR2 I could buy 14 of this rental car. And that rental car wasn´t bad at all. Maybe i should change car?"
What do you think he did?
 

The is not your ordinary Carrera...

 

This car was tested in Road & Track a couple of months ago. You cold see it by checking the license plate on this and on the one in Road & Track -yes, the same. During the transport of this to Houston, USA the the weights on the wheel where moved, resulting in scary high speed characteristics. When Mario Andretti drove this he said this was capable of much more if not the CTR been so unstable around 200 mph and over. What a pity. But Ruf was mentioned in the US newspaper USA today on a full page, so Ruf got good publicity "over there".
 
 
 

Starting price of the CTR is 450 000 DM. That is expensive if you compare it to a 911 Turbo but "cheap" if you compare it to the McLaren F1. And the CTR2 is almost as fast as the F1. So everything is in relation to each other. Well, I think it's expensive. But there are 25 people in the world per year who don't hesitate to buy a Ruf CTR2. Mr. Ruf sells 25 of these a year and the business seems like it´s going well, so we're going to see many nice cars from Pfaffenhausen...
 

Stefan is wondering whether of selling the Ferrari F355...Almost..