EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT SINGER'S GONE BIG

Thought the DLS was wild? The DLS-T adds turbos... and wing

- Ollie Marriage

Let's just marvel at this one for a while shall we? I suspect you have been already. Maybe you'd like some more time? Go back, just check that rear arch is as mad as it looks?

It is, take it from me. I saw this car a few months back as a clay model. I'm not sure I've ever had a car deliver more of an optical haymaker. The proportions, the width, the haunches, the rear wing... OK, the wings - I'll come onto that shortly.

Right, pick your jaw up, it's fact time. This is the Dynamics and Lightweighting Study - Turbo, an amalgam of Singer's last two interpretations of the Porsche 911. Those were the DLS and last year's Turbo Study. In other words it's a turbocharged DLS, although as your eyes are informing you, this is clearly not just a matter of bolting a pair of puffers onto the 4.0-litre flat six and shoving it out the door. Not least because this engine is a 3.8.

You can tell where inspiration has been drawn from, can't you? Seventies Le Mans - but specifically a car that didn't compete there, but in IMSA racing in the USA: the Type 934/5. That car swept the Group 4 board in 1977, winning six of the eight races. "From a design standpoint, my one criticism of that car is that it looks a bit anaemic at the front," says Singer's founder Rob Dickinson, "and I wanted our car to be muscular at the front to compete with the back and I really wanted to go to town on the back."