Geneva Motor Show: 2017 RUF CTR revealed

German mega-tuner RUF has built itself an awesome reminder of just how mental its CTR Yellowbird really was.

What's a CTR Yellowbird, you ask? Shame on you. RUF’s CTR, more famously known as the Yellowbird, made a trifling 320kW and 550Nm on its down days. No traction control. No PASM dampers.

It was the star of the jaw-dropping vid of Auto Motor Und Sport tester (and Nurburgring ace) Stefan Roser, taking a firm grasp of one of the scariest Porsche offshoots ever created and absolutely ragging it around the entire length of the track. Sideways. All the time. Just Stefan, a spookily fast CTR and a lot of arm-over action.

RUF has come to Geneva this year with what looks for all the world like a 964-era 911 tarted up as a CTR clone – only it’s not. And it’s not even a Porsche. RUF – like HSV – is recognised as a small car maker in its own right, so it’s gone and built a brand new CTR to celebrate 30 years since the Yellowbird was launched on an unsuspecting world.

And it’s stunning.

Built around a carbon tub that has then had a steel subframe built around it, the new CTR sports pushrod dampers and a-arm suspension at all four corners, carbon ceramic brakes and a completely carbon fibre body to keep weight down to 1200kg.

While there are no Porsche badged bits on the body or chassis (okay, aside from a Porsche-spec dash unit), the powerplant is all Stuttgart. A Mezger-spec 3.6-litre water-cooled twin-turbo at heart, RUF has tuned it to produce 522kW and a faintly terrifying 880Nm – just reference back to that 1200kg weight figure above again.

Oh yeah, it’s still rear-engined, too. Ulp.

It’s backed by a six-speed manual feeding power through a limited slipper to 19inch rims. RUF says it’ll do 0-100km/h in less than 3.5 seconds and 200km/h in less than nine seconds. Top speed? 362km/h. I say again. Ulp.

Just 30 CTRs will be built, and are priced accordingly; a cool $1,044,000 in our Aussie dollars, or 750,000 Euro. No word on whether Stefan will be given another crack at the car – though wouldn’t that be awesome?