Update, 14 March 2025: Believe it or not, this Ruf CTR’s valuation estimate wasn’t off the mark at all!
When the hammer fell at Gooding & Company’s Amelia Island auction, this low-mileage example of the legendary Yellowbird sold for a staggering US$6,055,000. This makes it the most expensive Porsche 911-based vehicle sold on record.
The original pre-auction story runs below unchanged.
If the 1980s was your era, you’ll know it as one of the most insane performance cars of a daring period. If you grew up playing the racing games of the 2000s, you’ll know it as the Porsche that wasn’t a Porsche due to varying licensing agreements.
Either way you come to it, there’s no denying the Ruf CTR ‘Yellowbird’ is one of the most iconic cars of its era, and one of the mere 29 ever built is headed to auction with a staggering guide price.
Offered by Gooding & Company at the 2025 Amelia Island Auctions on March 6-7, this 1989 example is one of only nine CTRs produced in the definitive ‘Blutengelb’ (Blossom Yellow) paintwork.
It was this colour which spawned the car’s nickname during a Road & Track comparison test for the 1987 ‘World’s Fastest Cars’ issue, where it was the designated victor.
The CTR was based on the narrow-bodied 911 Carrera 3.2 but featured an enlarged, twin-turbocharged 3.4-litre version of Porsche’s rear-mounted flat-six engine (Image: Gooding & Company)
While Ruf – which has independent manufacturer status, rather than simply existing as a tuning company – now builds its vehicles using its own bodies and chassis, the company used Porsche bodies in white as the basis during this time, along with modifying customer-supplied cars. The 911 Carrera 3.2 was the basis for the CTR, with the narrow-bodied model chosen to reduce aerodynamic drag.
Featuring an enlarged 3.4-litre Porsche flat-six engine equipped with twin turbochargers and a bespoke five- or optional six-speed manual gearbox, the latter fitted to this car, it delivered a truly immense 345kW and 553Nm – numbers which are more than competitive by today’s standards, let alone in the late ’80s.
It’s listed with a guide price “in excess of US$6,000,000”, converting to $9,511,000 in today’s Aussie dollar. Whether or not it actually achieves that figure will remain to be seen.
