Yellow Bird

Today, videos are everywhere of the latest and greatest sportscar lapping the famed Nurburgring. It’s a given that to achieve sportscar performance prowess a good run at the Green Hell is a prerequisite. Better still are the high production value videos from manufacturers like McLaren, Porsche and Bentley showing off their lap times. In the 1980s, before the internet (kids, ask your parents) these types of videos were few and had to be acquired via VHS (Again, ask your parents). The Nurburgring experience has become so common that it is expected that any car that wants to be considered a performance vehicle must do a lap at the ‘Ring.

In 1987 a little German company called RUF (Pronounced “roof”) recorded their 8 minute and 5 second lap in the RUF CTR Yellow bird a car based on a Porsche 911. It was effectively the precursor to the modern big-budget video shoot of a Nurburgring run and has become legendary among many petrol sniffers around the world. The video is a masterclass in car control and pushing the limits of the twin-turbo 470 horsepower, manual transmission Yellow Bird. Even by today’s standards it holds its own in a demonstration of performance driving. Mentioning “Yellow Bird” around a connoisseur of the automotive arts is like a secret handshake. An understanding of its its special place in history.

In 1987, the Yellow Bird was thrown into the lion’s den of a Road & Track magazine test for the World’s Fastest Cars run at Volkswagen’s Ehra-Lessian test track. Lined-up for take-off against the boutique automaker RUF were a pair of Porsche 959s, Ferrari Testarossa, Ferrari GTO, Lamborghini Countach, among others. The RUF would finish the day with the highest top speed of 211mph! Over 30 years ago a redesigned Porsche was the fastest car in the world all the way until the arrival of the McLaren F1 which set a 221mph top speed in 1993.

If you have seen it the video, it’s worth your time to appreciate its achievement and the lore that follows it, even to this day.

If you want to know more about RUF we recommend reading this story from Road & Track.