A hand-built, one-of-a-kind, air-cooled 911 for wealthy Porsche enthusiasts who don’t have everything. Yet.
The 964-series Porsche 911 has a lot to thank Rob Dickinson for. The former singer-songwriter for British alt-rock band Catherine Wheel—and cousin of Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson—turned his passion for air-cooled Porsches into a business in 2009 when he founded Singer Vehicle Design. Since then, Singer’s beautifully reimagined 964s have rehabilitated the reputation of what was once considered the one of the least desirable Porsche 911 sports cars.
Launched in 1989, the 964 was the product of a Porsche in crisis. Porsche’s U.S. sales had plummeted 23 percent in 1987 and a further 32 percent in 1988, and production slumped from nearly 53,000 cars annually to just shy of 26,000. Production of the 944, once the cornerstone of Porsche’s cash flow, was less than a third of its 1985 peak, and the 14-year-old 928 faced tough competition from BMW’s 850i and the then-new R129 Mercedes-Benz SL. And although Porsche insisted 85 percent of the 964 was all-new, it looked little different from the previous model.
Jamming new suspension, power steering, antilock brakes, a heavily revised engine, a new automatic transmission, and all-wheel drive—the 964 was initially available only in Carrera 4 spec—into what was essentially the old 911’s footprint created a car rife with unhappy compromises. The 964, its classic silhouette bookended by egregiously bulbous bumpers, was, insisted former Aston Martin boss Ulrich Bez (who Porsche hired as head of its R&D in October 1988 and subsequently oversaw the development of the 993), the worst 911 of all.
With the 993’s arrival, the world welcomed a 911 that drove better and, thanks to Dutch designer Harm Lagaay’s careful attention to detail, looked better. Thus the 964’s stock began to decline rapidly. By the time Dickinson founded Singer, 964s were among the most affordable air-cooled old-school 911s on the market. This, combined with the fact that nice examples could still be found in relatively plentiful numbers, made them the perfect donor cars for Singer to work its magic.
What Is Theon?
Those same fundamentals underpin Theon Design’s business model, which like Singer specializes in rebuilding 964s to the exacting specifications of wealthy enthusiasts who want a car that combines the look and feel and clattery engine noise of a classic air-cooled Porsche 911 with state-of-the-art engineering and luxury materials. Theon Design’s BEL001, a 964 rebuilt to order for a Belgian client, is a case in point.
Based in Oxfordshire in the heart of the U.K. ‘s “Motorsport Valley,” Theon Design was founded in 2016 by car designer Adam Hawley, whose résumé includes stints at Jaguar Land Rover, Lotus, and BMW, and marketing and business development specialist Lucinda Argy. Since then, it has completed fewer than 20 cars, not the least because each of its hand-built 964s takes about 6,000 man-hours to construct. Cars can be ordered with steel or carbon-fiber bodywork. Counterintuitively, perhaps, the steel-bodied cars are more expensive—such bodywork requires 14 weeks of manual labor versus two weeks for a carbon car, as all the steel panels are hand-formed.
Theon Design has four U.S. customers on its waiting list. And it’s quite a wait: Order a car now, and it’ll be 15 months before work starts and likely another 18 months before it is completed. On top of that, prices start at the equivalent of $462,000 for a Carrera 2 Coupe and $492,000 for a Carrera 2 Targa. And that doesn’t include shipping or taxes. Or the cost of the donor car. “Most of our customers have a massive interest in Porsche,” Hawley says. Obviously.
Meet BEL001
BEL001, built to the exacting specifications of its owner, cost about $600,000 to complete. Its lovely green paint—based on a color used on the 356 in the 1950s—hides a mix of digitally remastered carbon-fiber and steel panels. Hawley says the design combines the long hood of earlier 911s with the wider arches of a later ST or G-Series/964: “It’s a perfectly proportioned 911 shape that is both delicate and purposeful.”
The detailing is brilliant. The headlights look old-school, but behind the glass is modern technology. Same with the classic ’60s-style bullet exterior mirrors, which are electrically adjustable from the cockpit. Speaking of electrics, what you can’t see is a brand-new aero-grade wiring loom, which is 44 pounds lighter than the original 964 loom.
As with all Theon Design cars, the project began with Hawley asking two questions: Where will the car be driven? And how will it be driven?
“For BEL001, the customer wanted a highly usable, modernized, air-cooled 911,” he says. “One that combined classic Porsche driving dynamics with real grand touring ability.” That meant a Theon-created Porsche 911 with a comfortable, luxuriously trimmed interior and suspension that can handle a variety of road conditions.
Beautifully trimmed in soft tan leather over black, BEL001 is equipped with what Hawley calls touring front seats based on Porsche Recaro frames and mechanisms. However, they are modified with updated and custom-shaped foams to improve comfort and support. The classic 911 dash features gauges with numerals picked out in green, and a leather-wrapped carbon-fiber center console runs between the front seats. The classic three-spoke steering wheel is from Italy’s Nardi and features custom stitching to match the seats.
Nice Hardware
Modern convenience hides behind the classic style. A magnetic wireless charger, mounted behind the dash, allows a smartphone to control the sound system and provide satellite navigation. The cable-operated heater controls have the tactile feel of those found on a 1970s Porsche 911, but they control a highly efficient electric heating and air-conditioning unit.
The suspension retains the 964’s original layout front and rear, but adjustable adaptive shocks from Dutch specialist TracTive Suspension allow five damper rates to be selected manually via a rotary controller on the center console. Theon Design will fit RS-spec carbon-ceramic brakes if desired, but as BEL001 is intended for fast road cruising, it has cross-drilled steel rotors.
The car’s gold-hued 17-inch Fiske forged aluminum wheels recall the classic Fuchs “windmill” design used on 911s in the 1960s and ’70s, but the 225/45 front and 275/40 rear Michelin Pilot Sport tires mean the overall rolling diameter is the same as the tires on the 964’s 16-inch rims, and the difference between the front and rear contact patches is proportionally similar. “We haven’t tried to reinvent the 964,” Hawley says.
This all sounds like the sort of stuff you’d expect of a big-buck 911 restomod. But BEL001 has a sting in its tail. Literally.
Rear Thunder
Porsche might have made the turbocharger famous, but tucked under BEL001’s vented engine cover is an air-cooled 3.6-liter flat-six with a Rotrex centrifugal supercharger. The supercharger is installed where the air-conditioning unit was located originally on 964s, using the same mounting points, though these have been reinforced significantly to ensure there is no movement or flex. Two charge coolers, mounted on the opposite side of the engine, work in tandem with a water-methanol injection system that provides an additional cooling source while also upping the fuel-octane rating.
“We opted for the charge coolers, as they negate the need for an intercooler, which would be challenging to package in a 964’s compact engine bay,” Hawley explains. “This setup also means we can avoid adding air-intake apertures to the bodywork.”
The engine, rebuilt with independent throttle bodies, flowed and ported heads, a lightened bottom end, motorsport-grade Mahle barrels and pistons, and Carillo connecting rods and custom-profile camshafts, pumps out 400 hp and 367 lb-ft of torque. These are not huge numbers by today’s standards, perhaps—a new 911 Carrera S makes 443 hp and 390 lb-ft from less than 3.0 liters. But the 2,789-pound BEL001 is more than 500 pounds lighter than the contemporary Carrera S, which gives it a 12 percent better weight-to-power ratio.
The Proof Is In The Drive
You feel the thrust the moment you take BEL001 out on the road. I first tested a Porsche 911, a 3.0-liter Carrera, back in 1986 and subsequently racked up a lot of miles in 964s and 993s, so BEL001’s air-cooled clatter brings back a lot of good memories. As does its compact size, especially compared with today’s 911, which is more than 6.5 feet wide, mirror to mirror. But BEL001 is not how 911s used to be. It’s better. Much, much better.
The supercharger adds unexpected range to the iconic flat-six’s repertoire. There’s more response than you get from either a naturally aspirated or turbocharged 911 engine the moment you tickle the gas pedal. It pulls strongly from as little as 1,000 rpm as the belt-driven Rotrex immediately starts to pump the combustion chambers full of air. Then you get the same meaty midrange as an old-school 911 Turbo motor, and beyond that, the lovely 7,000-rpm top end of a classic naturally aspirated air-cooled flat-six.
The engine drives through a 964-spec G50 five-speed manual rebuilt carefully by Theon Design. The shift quality feels much more precise than any G50 I remember—even the ones I tested when they were new—and the perfectly spaced and well-weighted pedals make heel-and-toe downshifts a breeze. BEL001 is also an object lesson in why a light car with a broad-shouldered engine doesn’t require a six- or seven-speed transmission; third gear is all you need to dance this Porsche down a winding two-lane at a pace that will keep a modern 911 driver busy in its wake.
More weight over the front axle, courtesy of the front-mounted electric air-conditioning system, combined with a stiffer structure courtesy of a front strut brace, plus the sophisticated response of the TracTive shocks means BEL001 feels like a much more connected car than the factory Porsche 964 911 ever did. There’s more bite from the front tires on initial turn-in, and while purists will shriek, Theon Design’s electric power steering is excellent, not the least because it’s calibrated to match the steering effort required of the old unassisted system as it worked tires with a smaller contact patch.
There’s also much less of the constant bob-bob-bobbing from the front end and the rhumba from the rear that’s so characteristic of old 911s, which makes the car feel much more composed over less than perfect roads. There’s traction, of course, a ton of it thanks to the weight of the engine over the rear axle, but the limited-slip differential makes finding the chassis balance much easier when you go to power.
Is Theon Design’s 911 rework worth the money? Objectively, you could buy a new 911 GT3 RS, a 911 Turbo S, and a 911 Carrera Cabrio, ensuring you had a modern 911 for any mood, and still have enough left over to build a garage to house them. But what you pay for here is meticulous craftsmanship and stunning attention to detail. In an era when even Ferraris and Lamborghinis are mass produced, owning a hand-built sports car is next-level stuff—look at how many cars Pagani and Konigsegg have sold for seven-figure sums over the past decade.
So, then, yes. For seriously wealthy enthusiasts who want to indulge their passion for air-cooled Porsches, Theon Design’s take on a 911 is worth the money.
