In 1987, as the cold war was coming to an end, Road & Track magazine assembled a cohort of the day’s super cars only 10 miles from the border between East and West Germany. The location was the Volkswagen’s Ehra-Lessien test track and intention was to crown the world’s fastest car. Amongst Ferrari 288 GTO, Testarossa, Lamborghini Countach and Porsche 959 sat a bright yellow car that looked like a 911 Carrera but bore a different logo and it read “Ruf”. That yellow car, nicknamed “yellowbird” went on to set a top speed of 211 mph (339 km/h) which couldn’t be matched by any of the cars present. That feat went on to to push the brand to global prominence, but that day was only a small chapter in the storied history of Ruf.
Today, I stood outside the same workshop that built that Yellowbird and next to me stood Aloisa Ruf. “You see, on the left, house number 19, that’s my grandparents’ home. That is where my father was born and where I spent a lot of my childhood” she said as she pointed to a modest house next to a gas station to the left of the Ruf workshop. “In 1939, my grandfather (Alois Ruf Sr.) started the business as a small workshop and repair shop. It was wartime Germany, so he was fixing anything he could. In 1950s, after the war, my grandmother started the gas station. She ran the gas station while my grandfather ran the workshop and my dad, as a young boy would fuel cars with his older brother. The vision at the time was to be the first place at the entrance of the town.” The town she was referring to is Pfaffenhausen which is nestled between Stuttgart and Munich.
Alois Ruf Jr. took over the business in 1974 following the death of his father Alois Sr. By then, the workshop was already servicing and working on Porsches but Alois Jr. ramped up the business. In 1975, the first Porsche to be tuned by Ruf came to life. Since then the workshop has been the birthplace of several tuned 911s. Ruf went on to be approved as a manufacturer in 1982 and then came the famous Yellowbird CTR. The car
Aloisa led me to the workshop on the other side of the road as she explained, “We made ourselves famous as a Porsche Specialist.” The building on the other side was the Porsche service centre run by Ruf. “People are actually travelling from Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden to come and get their cars service here. And the paperwork would say - Serviced at Porsche Centre Ruf.” Outside the service centre were several Porsches and Rufs, some of them customer cars and some, Ruf’s own prototypes. One such car that drew my attention was a 986 Boxster with a Ruf badge on the bonnet. “This is the 3400 S prototype. It was my mother’s brainchild. Her vision was to put a 911 engine in the Boxster. When the Boxster was launched, it was kind of positioned as a woman’s car. It didn’t have the performance of the 911 but everyone who drove a Boxster knows the handling is amazing because of the mid engine layout. It’s a driver’s car. So my mother’s idea was to put a flat six in the car and to make it more aggressive looking, she put the cup aero kit on it. We made 25 cars.” Aloisa’s mother Estonia Ruf was as much of an integral part of the business as Alois Jr.
Behind the Porsche service centre was the main workshop and this where the current line up of Rufs, the Tribute, SCRS and the Rodeo are built. As a manufacturer, Ruf take their business very seriously. So seriously that they even machine their own screws. We went to the body shop next. “We wanted to keep an intimate cockpit. The only thing that has changed from the original 911 design wise is that we extended the wheelbase and made the car wider. Basically our cabin space is the same but the exterior is bigger.” The body shell was completely built in carbon fibre and weighed only 16 kg. One of the specialities of the Ruf cars were that the roll cage was integrated into the body. “The roll cage is made out of steel alloy and each element of the car is part of the structure.”
“At the same time as the painting starts, the upholstery department starts working. We have over 280,000 colours to choose from. And interior wise, anything is possible. Our goal is to make dreams come true.” Aloisa showed a deer skin upholstery work which the customer requested. He wanted the car to be upholstered using deer skin from Pfaffenhausen region which Ruf was able to realise. “We try to stay within Europe as much as we can to support local businesses. At the end of the day, we have only two rules when it comes to customisation: safety and performance. As long as neither of those are compromised, anything goes.” One of the interesting aspects of this workshop was that, unlike other small volume manufacturers and restomod companies, Ruf were doing everything in-house. From machining the screws to upholstering the car with special request material, there was very little coming from the outside.
The production floor of the factory was even more fascinating. The current line up was all CTR Anniversaries which are nearing the end of their 50 unit production run. CTR Anniversary is a celebration of the original CTR and the anniversary is a ground up new car with a 3.6 litre water cooled turbo engine producing over 700 horsepower which is paired to a 7 speed manual gearbox. The car weighs only 1250 kg thanks to the carbon fibre body. “Everything underneath, we try to keep to Formula 1 grade. We have double wishbone suspension with pushrods on the front and rear and the integrated roll cage in the the cabin” Aloisa pointed out on the red CTR anniversary on the dolly. The company is currently producing 3 other models, the Tribute, SCR and the Rodeo. Tribute has an air cooled turbo engine while the SCR sports a naturally aspirated engine. The Rodeo is an off road car which is the company’s latest endeavour. This area is where the cars are assembled, taken out for testing and later finished before handing the car over to the customer.
Following a tour of the main workshop, we headed back to the main building and behind it was the workshop where they work on and service other Ruf cars. The building also housed the engine test rooms. It is important to remember that Ruf is a full on manufacturer and they build their own engines and gearboxes along with ZF. And each engine is tested to its limits in the engine rooms. The older engine rooms is used to test engines with lower RPM while the newer engine room is used to test larger and higher RPM engines. Following a quick tour of this workshop which housed customer cars and some prototypes which Ruf are working on, I stood back again in the foyer.
In the time I was at the facility, Alois Ruf Jr. was walking about with customers and interacting with the staff on one side while Estonia was busy on the other side. Aloisa, while showing me across the workshop still chatted to the staff and inspected the work going on. This modest facility was building around 30 cars an year with a workforce of around 75 employees. The first feeling you get when walking into the facility was how personal the company felt. Alois Jr. is still known to test every single car produced before handing the car over to the customers. 3 generations of the Ruf family are involved in this company. Alois Sr. and his wife laid the foundations to this company which was built upon by Alois Jr. and Estonia and now, Aloisa has joined the company taking it to new heights. Ruf joined the tuning world as one of the pioneers, went onto become a manufacturer and forged their own path but they have not given up on their modest beginnings and are still based in the outskirts of Pfaffenhausen, 87 years later.
This article first appeared first in speedarticle post 007
