NEWS
Ruf creates a flateight with 1000hp
Bavarian Porsche tuner turned fully-fledged manufacturer, Ruf, has done what the Stuttgart sports car maker has never done: it has built a flat-eight for its road cars
Ruf’ s new flat-eight engine, the B8, is still in prototype form. The car it will eventually power has yet to be unveiled
n Eschewing its own traditions, Porsche has so far opted to install V8s and V10s in its super and hypercars, rather than adding more cylinders to the engine format it has become famous for: horizontally opposed motors. As a result, Porsche has never installed a flat-eight engine in one of its road-going machines.
It has built engines with eight horizontal cylinders, but only for race applications: the 1.5-litre Type 753 Formula One engine and the power-plant for the Group 6 sportscar, the 908. It even made a flat 12 for the 917. But it has always limited its flat road engines to a maximum of half a dozen cylinders.
By following its own traditions – the pursuit of mega amounts of power and terrifying top speeds – Ruf has developed a new engine, the B8 –‘ Boxer Engine with eight cylinders’. The motor is formed of two banks of four cylinders positioned 180 ° to each other, either side of a common crank. It displaces 4.8 litres, has a turbocharger for each bank and produces 1000hp and 1000Nm of torque.
It’ s still in its testing phase, but Ruf installed the B8 into a modified version of its own supercar, the CTR3. To accommodate the longer engine, the CTR3’ s wheelbase was lengthened by 100mm. The test vehicle sports a camouflage-like livery, but the car is still easily recognisable as Ruf’ s mid-engined two-seater with a Porsche 997 911 front end.
The B8 made its debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the CTR3 running in the Supercar Run, cementing Ruf’ s intentions that it won’ t be doing a Porsche. Its flat eight is not a race engine, but will be for an outrageously fast supercar.
6 The Engine Rebuilder Issue 06