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2011 Ruf Roadster: Mr. Ruf Shows Us the Targa
By Michael Jordan | April 25, 2011


Alois Ruf called us from Disneyland. At first we thought he meant the small but well-known Ruf factory in Pfaffenhausen, Germany, which Porsche freaks regard as a kind of fantasyland for high-performance Porsches, where anything is possible. But actually it was the regular Disneyland in Los Angeles (even the families of German car executives come to the Happiest Place on Earth, apparently), and Ruf was inviting us to see the latest product of his own clever, Disneylike elves, the 2011 Ruf Roadster.

We duly turned up on a Saturday morning just as the sun came up at Cars and Coffee in Irvine, California, the weekly car show organized by Ford's John Clinard that has become a little bit like L.A.'s answer to the Geneva auto show, since you're treated to secret previews of impending production cars all the time. Later the Ruf Roadster appeared, the whole sunburned Ruf family waving happily from within, and once this very low car negotiated the speed bumps into the parking area, it took its place next to a 1967 Porsche 911 Targa.
Ruf took us aside and explained that the Ruf Roadster is the latest addition to his company's line of custom-built Porsches. It is indeed inspired by the first Porsche Targa, and like the original car this Ruf is meant to be more like a roadster than the current Porsche Targa with its glamorous glassy cabin and massive sliding sunroof. This particular Ruf Roadster happened to be on its way to a client in the area, although it had stopped off for a little performance testing first.
The Roadster actually begins as a coupe, not a convertible, because the convertible car's opening is too large and ungainly for Ruf's purposes. The Ruf coachbuilders strip the coupe to a bare shell, remove the roof, install the characteristic Targa rollover hoop across the body and carefully tie it into a reinforced floorpan, so the hoop reinforces the overall structure as well as stiffens the sides of the body.
The car is finished finish off with a low, sweptback, Porsche Speedster-style windshield and the aero-tested front and rear treatments from Ruf's other 911 specialty models. The pair of carbon-fiber roof panels can be stowed in the front compartment, and the triple-layer plastic rear window that recalls the 1967 Targa is kept taut by an electric motor and then can be manually unsnapped and rolled down for a true, open-air roadster experience. 

One of Ruf's specially built, 553-horsepower, turbocharged, horizontally opposed sixes can be found under this Roadster's rear deck, while carbon-ceramic brakes and racing-style, center-lock forged wheels with semi-slick tires are under the fenders. This car also has special paint in a matte aluminum hue that reflects rainbow highlights. A Ruf Roadster with a conventional, 400-hp normally aspirated six starts at $284,000, but if you want the turbocharged engine, dual-clutch PDK automated manual transmission and all-wheel drive -- well, maybe you have your own elves that know how to print money.
Freeman Thomas, the design director for Ford's strategic concepts group and a long-time friend of Alois Ruf, was on hand along with a surprising number of the Ruf faithful (photographer/filmmaker Jeff Zwart and two principals from Porsche Design among them), and the Ford man told us that the two trends he sees in current automotive design are (ironically enough) environmental friendliness and high-performance, largely because sophisticated computer-aided engineering makes both equally possible.
In a way Alois Ruf concurs, since he proudly points out to us that Siemens has recently commissioned a series of ten battery-powered electric eRuf Roadsters like the one we drove last fall with several different powertrain configurations, a project officially endorsed by the German Ministry of the Environment. Ruf is equally proud of the Ruf factory's credentials as a green-friendly facility. He also says that Ruf has just opened a factory-authorized Porsche service operation with five bays, an outgrowth of Porsche's acquisition of Ruf's restoration business.
It's hard to know what to make of the Porsche 911 business in general, as the factory now offers almost two dozen variants of the 911. It is about to introduce a new, even larger car, and the 911 seems headed in a direction that is a world away from Ferry Porsche's first, compact Porsche 911. There's also the issue of whether Porsche will be distracted in its new role as the center of engineering for Audi and Volkswagen (Bugatti and Lamborghini, too?) after the Stuttgart company's recent takeover by Volkswagen AG.
But for Alois Ruf, life seems to be good. His company continues to manufacture about 30 specialty models each year and sells a range of high-performance equipment that is finding a growing clientele. As specialty cars go, Ruf's cars are unique -- earnest attempts to further Porsche's core values, which after all began with the ideals of efficiency and modernism, not just performance. As he tells us, "When I asked a customer to explain his enthusiasm for us, he said, 'I come to Ruf because I want more of what is Porsche.'"
In a way, Alois Ruf is the Enzo Ferrari of our time, only a happy, sunburned one who lives in a Disneyland of automotive engineering that makes surprising things possible.

Michael Jordan, Executive Editor, Edmunds.com