Stained mugs, cheery engineers and questionable calendars: Ruf’s workshop is a living monument to going fast
On my first visit to Ruf’s terracotta-tiled workshop in Pfaffenhausen, I was greeted by a half-dressed Porsche 550 Spyder being loaded with one of the company’s 4.1-litre Mezger engines.
The technicians, in forest green overalls, said it was a silly and possibly dangerous idea, but the client insisted, and deep down these men were happy to oblige. That machine is out there somewhere, terrifying people with 900bhp per tonne. In an adjacent bay was an original Yellowbird, casually. I remember Rafael Riethmüller, a warm and fastidious test engineer, saying something along the lines of “imagine doing 212mph when a Mk2 Golf GTI was a fast car”, from his wheelchair.
Riethmüller is a paraplegic who races an E46 BMW M3 with hand controls, owns a W221 Mercedes S65 and can rattle off the camber settings of any Ruf, although he now commutes to Affalterbach to work on AMGs. His love of the 1987 Yellowbird will be undimmed. At the back of the workshop floor was a 993-era convertible 911, restored and customised for a scion of the Piëch family, who planned to give the car to his girlfriend on her birthday.
How the other half live, eh? In a side room is an ancient dyno that BMW sold to Ruf in the 1980s. It can take only 550lb ft, which is why BMW and the 1.5-litre turbocharged monster it developed for Formula 1 had no use for it. Ruf uses it for the old engines, a great many of which it still makes and reconditions today with total authenticity.
The light-filled workshop, punctuated with dollops of prime colour, has a Kodachrome warmth and richness about it. It is neat but also littered with finished flat sixes on pallets, shelves of differentials, lathes and tools everywhere, with the smell of paint infusing the comforting, dominant oil aroma. Cars are suspended off the workshop floor on slick jacks, almost displayed like artworks, which feels appropriate.
It’s a homely atmosphere, which is an unforgettable anachronism in a world of car factories in which carrier robots shuffle along in silence and assembly line workers reach for and fit colour-coded components under pressure of an unrelenting takt time. There you won’t see a coffee mug perched on a stickered toolbox or a faded, inappropriate calendar on the wall – and you certainly won’t see potted plants.
Neither will you see Stefan Roser, star of the 1989 promotional film Faszination auf dem Nürburgring at the wheel of an original Yellowbird, sauntering through, as I did on that first visit. If the existence of this short film is news to you, pop the kettle on and get to YouTube – you won’t regret it.
By far the best thing about the Ruf workshop, though, is that it isn’t a museum. Even the CTR Anniversary and its naturally aspirated SCR sibling – monocoque supercars both – are built there. It is a busy place. So busy with service and restoration, in fact, that Ruf won’t thank me for suggesting you try to pin down a visit. But do so and it will be among the most memorable petrolhead excursions you ever make.
