Storied Porsche tuner Ruf has taken to the Goodwood Festival of Speed to show off a wild new prototype supercar with a flat-eight boxer engine.
Known as the B8, the mule is powered by a twin-turbocharged 4.8-litre horizontally opposed lump at its rear - the same format as the 911 has always used – but with two extra cylinders.
Ruf claims it develops more than 986bhp and 737lb ft of torque - far more than the six-cylinder CTR3 on which the new car is based.
Ruf refers to the prototype internally as the Erprober ('tester'), which is reflective of the fact that it is "not yet a production model but serves as a dedicated testbed for technologies that will shape a future Ruf model".
The German company said that all its cars begin life "long before the world sees them", so it's likely that work on a production-ready flat-eight car is well advanced.
Ruf noted that neither it nor any other company has deployed such an engine "in this form" and said the prototype's appearance at Goodwood was "a new chapter in automotive history".
The test mule itself gives few clues to the eventual production model, being largely identical to the CTR3 on which it is based but extended by 100mm to accommodate the longer engine block.
The engine sends its generous reserves to the back axle through a six-speed manual gearbox, but Ruf hasn't said whether this configuration will carry through to the final car.
Of special note is the B8's striking livery, which features a distinctive graphic in Blossom Yellow - a shade inspired by Ruf's best-known model, the Nurbürgring-slaying CTR Yellowbird.
Porsche itself has experimented with this unusual engine arrangement in the past, creating a concept for a 918 Spyder successor called the 904 (below), which would have used a 5.0-litre flat eight producing around 750bhp and 738lb ft.
