THIS SINGER VEHICLE DESIGN FACTORY TOUR IN 4K IS PURE AUTOMOTIVE AWESOMENESS!
If you’re even slightly into Porsches, then you simply must know about Singer Vehicle Design and the pretty much perfect restomods they create of classic air-cooled Porsche models. SVD is a California-based company that specializes in restoring and modifying air-cooled Porsche 911 models, founded back in 2009 by Rob Dickinson. Obviously a motoring fanatic, but he’s also the former frontman for the British rock band Catherine Wheel which was big between 1990 and 2000. Rob grew up around cars and had a passion for 911s from as early as he can remember, so after his music career he decided to combine his love of cars and music by starting his own company focused on restoring and modifying Porsche 911s. The SVD Porsches are restomods, so the car keeps an authentic classic look and feel when it comes to aesthetics, but is upgraded in every other facet with the best that modern automotive technology and engineering offers resulting in an amazing-looking classic Porsche that’s not only reliable but plenty fast too. Over the last few years, Singer Vehicle Design has gained a reputation for creating some of the most amazing and well-crafted custom 911s in the world and their cars are highly sought-after by those who can afford them - these German restomods aren’t cheap, in fact, in many instances, Singer Design Porsches are actually more expensive than what a brand new performance model from Porsche costs.
The demand for these bespoke Porsches is so great, even with such a high price tag, that if you want one of the new old cars, you’re going to be waiting for at least four years. The company has created 250 cars in their unique style, and there are a further 450 models that need to be built. The company has actually capped the production of the air-cooled models at that figure but is now starting to carry out the same transformations on turbocharged Porsche models. They’re busy with three of them now, and already have orders for another 200. That’s rather amazing if you ask us. With such a huge demand for the products, it didn’t take long for the company to outgrow its premises and so a new one was needed, a big new one - they now have 115 000 square feet of space. Ollie Marriage from Top Gear recently completed a factory tour of Singer Vehicle Design’s new manufacturing headquarters in Torrance, California and got to see what happens behind the scenes in the creation of these superb machines - and now so can we. The tour was overseen by Mazen Fawaz, the current Singer Vehicle Design CEO. The assembly plant is packed with like-minded car geeks as well as the coolest parts and accessories money can buy. While it’s not mentioned in the tour, SXdrv has a little inside knowledge of some things. There’s a host of carbon fibre parts available for some models of these Singer restomods like dashboards, door panels, seat backs and even wheels. As you can imagine the quality has to be better than world-class, and so when you find out that a fair amount of these carbon bits are actually made right here in South Africa at an office park in Randburg, it’s a bit of a ‘no freaking way’ moment. Yeah, Blackstone Tek - or BST - supplies the parts. They’re the world’s largest manufacturer of carbon fibre wheels as seen on thousands of Ducatis, on all MotoE racebikes, and on Ariel Atom, Donkervoort and Vuhl racecars.
Take a look at the YouTube video showing the behind-the-scenes goings on at the bespoke air-cooled Porsche restomod specialists, Singer Vehicle Design at their expansive new factory based in California. It gives a great insight into the company, its ethos and just why the cars cost as much as they do and are so sought-after: Singer Factory Tour: How The Most Beautiful Porsches In The World Are Restored | Top Gear
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