This Restored 89 Porsche 911 Could be Yours
Dan Neil dips his toe in the world of hyper-restored cars from Singer Vehicle Design and finds the ‘Hollywood Commission’ of the Porsche 911 a drastic improvement in almost every way
5 min
OUR TEST CAR cannot be bought for love or money. This 1991 Porsche 911 reimagined by Singer Vehicle Design—called the “Hollywood Commission,” in Bahama Yellow—is one of only 450 examples that the Torrance, Calif.-based fantasy factory will build, all of which are spoken for, with average costs in the high six figures, not including the donor car. Which is a pity. I was this close.
Some might ask why even bother driving Mr. Hollywood here, since Singer’s “Classic Study” cars are basically unobtainable. People ask silly questions, don’t they? For Porsche fanatics, such a car lives at the end of an impossible, aspirational rainbow, right next to their pot of FU gold. Imagine, a fully modern, daily driveable vintage 911, with a flat-six engine rapping and wailing at over 7,000 revs, meshed with the perfect five-speed (or six) stick shifter—a car with all the charisma of the classic design but twice the performance, rebuilt to standards of precision that make those schlubs back in Stuttgart look like cave dwellers.
Singer is building an even more bat-guano crazy, nth-degree restomod: the Dynamics and Lightweighting Study. Developed with F1 technology house WAE, the DLS gets the full Singer treatment, including a motorsports-tuned rebuild of the naturally aspirated flat-six engine. Prices start just shy of $2 million. Only 75 will be built. At last count, more than 50 commissions had been completed.
Founded in 2009 by musician Rob Dickinson, Singer started humbly, and relatably, as one guy getting in way over his head restoring an old car. But he had game. “Pretty soon, people were asking Rob to do another, and another,” said Mazen Fawaz, Singer’s chief executive. This was fortuitous inasmuch as Dickinson had once trained as an industrial designer.
Dickinson is by no means the first to slam and tune a 911, but it’s fair to say no one has ever gone quite so far, at such a high level of precision, with such impeccable taste and with so little regard for propriety.
It only takes a couple blocks in the “Hollywood Commission” to tell that it’s a drastically better car than the donor ever could be. For one thing, it borrows from its technical near future, using the steering rack and brake package of the 993-chassis GT3, with ABS and rotors the size of Saxon shield bosses. The motorsports-evolved front end is one reason the test car corners with the smartness of a modern track car instead of gently obsolescing junk.
In back, under the engine cover—watch that you don’t klonk yourself on the big spoiler—you will find a beautiful ceramic-finish plenum, also nicked from the 996-series GT3, wrapped in braided stainless steel. When they see it, dudes make a face like pirates opening a treasure chest.
Before my visit, I winced at the word “reimagined,” but it kind of works as a last option. You can’t call what Singer does restoration because so much of the donor gets binned, starting with the steel fenders, which get swapped out for luridly flared, flawlessly finished carbon-fiber hips. In our car, the doors and monocoque frame remained in the original German steel.
It’s not re-manufacturing, either, since what’s left is not returned to original. Every widget has been breathed upon, updated or mutated for motorsports.
Nor might you call it tuned. What Singer does is more invasive than that. While the suspension layout (upper wishbone and lower A arms in front, and trailing arm in the rear) is faithful in principle, the geometry is radically different. The front and rear track are much broader, wheels are wider, the ride height lower, the stance vastly slinkier.
The componentry is state-of-tomorrow hot-rodding, including fully adjustable Öhlins suspensions, heavy-duty bushings, forged aluminum links and bars and heim-joint adjustable cross-strut brace up front. Note: All of this can be ordered, a la carte or prix fixe, according to the client’s wishes, la-tee-dah.
The traditional 40%/60% front/rear weight balance remains intact, but the handling is unrecognizable. Oversteer, schmoversteer. Hunkered over fat Michelins, the car’s grip on the street is unshakeable.
Glory be, listen to that engine. Typically, the donor’s flat-six gets bored and stroked to 4.0 litres displacement, around 390 hp. It then gets a motorsports makeover from top to bottom, with lightened valvetrain, titanium conrods and forged pistons, forged crankshaft, lightweight flywheel—the proverbial works, if your proverbs include bratty Shanghai billionaires.
At full song, over 5,000 rpm or so, the free-breathing six snarls and snare drums, on and off throttle, with a titanium-piped resonance that is thrilling, tromboning, outrageous. In the driver’s footwell: three small pedals, perfectly positioned for heel-and-toe footwork.
In contast to all the high-tech hot-rodding, the 964’s steel frame needs little to no additional bracing, I was told. Singer will seam-weld a car’s monocoque if asked, but it’s considered unnecessary. For one thing, the car emerging from the process weighs 150-200kg less than it did going in.
Which brings us to my takeaway: Among all the wonders of Singer’s fabrication, the haute-couture upholsteries and the horological obsession with precision, the most astonishing bit of kit remains the 911’s monocoque structure, a design that dates back almost unchanged to Ferry Porsche’s original in 1963. Of all the liberties taken it’s practically the only thing that remains sacrosanct.
Hallelujah.
1991 Porsche 911 reimagined by Singer ‘Hollywood Commission’
Price: $1.5 million
Powertrain: Naturally aspirated 4.0-litre DOHC flat-six engine; six-speed manual gearbox; rear-drive with mechanically limited-slip rear differential
Power/torque: 390 hp at 7,200 rpm/432 Nm at 5,900 rpm
Curb weight: 1,242 pounds
0-100 km/h: 3.3 seconds
Corrections & Amplifications
The price of the Porsche 911 reimagined by Singer ‘Hollywood Commission’ test car is $1 million, including the cost of the donor car, and its front/rear weight balance is 40%/60%. A previous version of this article mistakenly referred to the $1 million figure as the “base price” and stated that the front/rear weight balance is 60%/40%. (Corrected on June 9.) The Dynamics and Lightweighting Study model of the Porsche 911 reimagined by Singer includes a naturally aspirated engine. A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that it has a turbocharged engine. (Corrected on June 12.)
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Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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