Someone’s just paid $800k over the list price for this Singer DLS

When Singer launched its Design and Lightweighting Study (DLS) a few years back, it pre-sold each of the 75 examples before the first client car even debuted. This foreshadowed spectacular inflation for the DLS, as is now evidenced by this Bring a Trailer auction.

Yep, someone has just paid $3m (about £2.2m) for a car that cost $2.2m three years ago. So in TG maths, that’s roughly... £600k earned by doing absolutely nothing.

Literally, because it’s racked up an extra one mile over the last year for a total odometer readout of… 18. If you completed the London Marathon a couple of months back, well done: you officially covered more ground in that single day than this thing has in its entire (second) life.

Anyway, about the DLS. This is chassis #73, and its underpinnings are from a 1991-reg 964-generation Carrera… sort of. Because while the odd nut and bolt might be the same, most of the mechanical elements have been cranked right up to 11.

That air-cooled, nat-asp flat-six sounds savage through the Inconel-titanium exhaust toward a 9.3k redline, and cooks up a soundtrack akin to Zeus opening the heavens above. Its numbers are strong: around 500bhp, 0-62mph in the late threes and a predicted top speed of 210mph. And all that’s achieved using a good old six-speed Hewland manual.

It’s not just about brute force either. The DLS’ chassis and subframes are 60 per cent stiffer than stock, the whole car squats 20mm lower to the ground than a standard 964, and there’s a 40mm FIA-grade roll cage hidden beneath its carbon-clad body.

All this makes for a sub-1.1-tonne vehicle that’ll put on a more precise sequence of dances than Channing Tatum in Step Up, thanks also to the Michelin rubber and Brembo brakes.

Chassis #73 also gets some tasteful touches, like staggered 18in forged magnesium alloys, blue leather Recaro carbon seats with tartan inserts, plus 18-karat gold trim along the rev counter. That’s on top of one main characteristic that draws people to the DLS: it looks like an old 911, but one that’s sautéed with a few subtle modern cues.

All of which begs the question… are Singer's cars actually massively underpriced?