Singer builds a 500bhp air-cooled flat-six with Williams

Porsches are often cited as marvels for the sheer amount of engineering that goes into building one. Porsche designs are so good that many tuners have made their mark by souping up these everyday supercars and making them go even faster. Singer, now a known name in Porsche circles, is known for its resto-mod Porsches where the tuner shoves boosted modern engines into the decades old body-shells.

After tuning Porsche engines and chassis for pure performance over decades, Singer has now developed a new engine based on the 25-year-old 3.6-litre air cooled boxer engine that powered the then Porsche 911. Singer partnered with Williams Advanced Engineering, a part of the Williams F1 group to co-develop the new engine commissioned by one Scott Blattner who is known to own many Singer Porsches.

The old 3.6-litre mill has been bored out to displace almost 4000cc. It gets titanium connecting rods, aluminium throttle bodies, improved oil dynamics and an exhaust made out of titanium and Inconel. It also gets ram-air intakes that scoop air from the rear quarter panels. With the latest in electronic fuel injection technology and old-school mechanical engineering coming together, the new mill revs up to an incredible 9000rpm pumping 493bhp of power.

Mind you, this is still an air cooled engine and the large cooling fan aft of the engine looks like it might be able to fly a plane on its own. The engine rendering shows abundant use of carbon-fibre in every possible bit of the engine including a row of extremely handsome intake trumpets.

Singer’s founder Rob Dickinson describes the new engine as the first fruit of its work with other technical partners, which means we can see more of such engineering art being created in future. And no, do not ask about the price tag. You might have to sell your Bentley to even consider buying one of these.