Ruf's one-off Project Dragon could top the Yellowbird's record
A two-year-old Ruf is chasing the record held by the car that made Ruf famous
Gooding Christie's will sell Ruf's one-off Project Dragon without reserve at the first Rétromobile New York, on 20 and 21 November 2026 at the Javits Center. The auction house estimates the orange 621 hp coupé at $6 million to $8 million. Ruf delivered it to its first owner in March 2024, and it has covered just 1,221 km since.
Project Dragon's $6 million estimate sits $55,000 below Ruf's auction record
The most expensive Ruf ever sold is a 1989 CTR Yellowbird, which fetched $6,055,000 at Gooding's Amelia Island sale in March 2025. Project Dragon's estimate starts $55,000 below that figure and ends almost $2 million above it, and with no reserve the car goes to the highest bidder wherever the bidding stops. The Yellowbird result opened a run: the second, third, fourth and fifth most expensive Rufs at auction all sold in the second half of 2025. The same house, renamed Gooding Christie's since, handled the Yellowbird sale.
Ruf kept the last CTR2 body-in-white in Pfaffenhausen for almost 30 years
Project Dragon starts from the last unused W09 body-in-white Ruf had kept in stock since the CTR2 era. The CTR2, built from 1995 to 1997 on the 993-generation 911 Turbo, was Ruf's follow-up to the Yellowbird. The commission came from one of Ruf's most important collectors, who had pursued the idea for decades and developed it with Alois Ruf and his team. That makes it a factory-built car on an original Ruf shell, rather than a restomod built on a donor 911.
A bespoke air-cooled flat-six gives Project Dragon 621 hp at 6,500 rpm
Ruf built a bespoke air-cooled twin-turbo flat-six for the car, rated at 621 hp at 6,500 rpm. That is about 40 hp more than the CTR2 Sport, and 101 hp more than the 520 hp the CTR2 offered at its 1995 launch. Bilstein PSS10 suspension, carbon-ceramic brakes, an integrated Ruf roll cage and centre-lock OZ Racing wheels made for this car complete the chassis. Ruf still develops its own engines, as the boxer-eight it showed at Goodwood in July made clear.
Tony Hatter, the designer of the Porsche 993, shaped Project Dragon's carbon body
Ruf brought in Tony Hatter, who joined Porsche's styling department in 1986, to shape the bespoke carbon-fibre bodywork. The Yorkshire-born designer is credited with the 993-generation 911 that the CTR2 was built on, and worked on the 911 GT1 and the production Carrera GT. His Carrera GT already has a price attached: a paint-to-sample example sold for $6,715,000 in Florida in March 2026, inside Project Dragon's estimate. The paint is a one-off shade called Dragon Fire Orange, repeated on the wheels and the gauges.
Rétromobile leaves Paris for the first time since 1976 to stage the New York sale
Rétromobile, held in Paris every year since 1976, stages its first event outside France at New York's Javits Center from 19 to 22 November. Gooding Christie's is the official auction partner, and Project Dragon is the headline lot of its two sale days. Putting a German one-off at the top of an American catalogue follows the money: both the Yellowbird record and the Carrera GT record were set at Florida sales, and the show's organisers chose New York for its 50th anniversary year.
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Ruf did not restore a CTR2 for this car, it finished one: the shell had waited in Pfaffenhausen since the 1990s, and Alois Ruf's own team built it up rather than converting a donor 911. That separates Project Dragon from the restomods it will be compared with. Its weakness is history. The Yellowbird earned its price as the car that gave Ruf its first big break in 1987, while Project Dragon's story so far is one owner and 1,221 km.
On 20 or 21 November the final price, fees included, will pass $6,055,000 and make a car delivered in 2024 the most expensive Ruf ever sold. The no-reserve format and the four big Ruf results that followed the Yellowbird in 2025 point the same way, and a sale inside the estimate would value Ruf's new work as highly as its most famous old one.
