LATIMES.COM F5
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHOME & DESIGN
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” says Drew
Coblitz with a laugh. The 31-year-
old Philadelphia-based luxury
expert and entrepreneur is the
owner of Singer Vehicle Design’s
latest work of art, a gloriously
up-leveled and optimized 1990
Porsche 911. I’m laughing too, but
mostly because of the visceral
reactions his meticulously
specced, inky-blue-black car is
provoking in me.
For a few high-speed moments
I’m the lucky one in his driver’s
seat, a work of woven-leather art in
its own right. With the hand-
carved ebony wood shifter knob in
my right hand (pretty much every
detail, from the car’s tuning down
to literal nuts and bolts, is custom-
ized by Singer for each client) and
my feet dancing across all three
pedals, I’m in internal combustion
heaven. Coblitz’s one-off is a formi-
dable yet nimble sports car with a
howling, high-revving soul, hell-
bent on devouring the curvaceous
canyon road we’re on as though it
might never see another.
Singer Vehicle Design is a
skunkworks hidden away in Sun
Valley that optimizes Porsche 911s
from 1989 to 1994, the era that
purists consider the pinnacle of
the German manufacturer’s air-
cooled engineering. These are not
merely restored sports cars,
though; these are masterpieces of
next-gen engineering, materials
science and haute couture-level
interiors. Think of them as the
automotive equivalent of Fabergé
eggs on steroids. Or to personify it
all, imagine Sean Connery’s 007
crossed with Charlize Theron and
blended with a dash of Joaquin
Phoenix’s Joker: sexy, strong,
audacious — and ultimately bril-
liant.
The man behind Singer is Rob
Dickinson, a wickedly witty Brit
and former songwriter and lead
singer of the ’90s rock band Cath-
erine Wheel. Since the first 911 he
spotted in 1970 as a 5-year-old, he’s
been smitten. Finally, after a stint
designing at Lotus Cars before
focusing on his music and a world
tour with his band before they
broke up in 2000 — with lots of
tinkering on his own cars in be-
tween — Dickinson landed in Los
Angeles to buy a 1969 911 E and fell
in love with its rich car culture. By
2009, he started Singer. “We’re
taking a legend that Porsche put
to one side 20 years ago to pursue
other, forward-looking cars,” says
Dickinson. “We have the benefit of
hindsight, and I’d like to think we
are shining quite a bright light on
Porsche’s heritage.”
So what does an “insane” Sing-
er detail look like? On every pro-
duction car— even Mercedes and
Ferrari models — there’s a gap
between panels — the door and
the rear fender, for example. Run
your hand over the gap between
panels and if one is higher or lower,
they aren’t flush. “If you take a
caliper and measure our gaps and
flush, they will be perfect on every
car,” says Mazen Fawaz, Singer
managing director, tech entrepre-
neur and Formula One legend
Jenson Button’s teammate for this
year’s Baja 1000. “It sounds silly,
but you have one shot at getting
those perfect. If they aren’t, a car
doesn’t leave our hands.”
Every car that passes through a
Singer transformation requires a
minimum of 4,000 human hours.
Customers can spend up to a yearspeccing every detail from per-
formance upgrades to interiors.
There are 13 types and 500 colors of
leather to sort through — each car
uses seven hides — and limitless
paint options. The leather is hand-
stitched in the company’s Orange
County interiors studio, overseen
by Andy Harrison, who has
masterminded the insides of im-
portant machines such as the
McLaren F1, Formula 1 cars, Lo-
tuses, Jaguar super cars, the De-
Lorean and even SpaceX rockets.
“One owner showed us a photo of a
sunset,” says Harrison. “We ended
up using nearly a dozen different
colors in the weave for the seats —
a weave that is only achievable by
a few companies in the world.”
Coblitz, one of Singer’s young-
est customers, went into the com-
missioning with a specific vision. “I
wanted to do a murdered-out
Singer because people very often
go for the very pretty, very bright
colors or the heritage colors, which
are awesome,” he says. “But I
wanted something more modern
and edgy.”
That led to months of testing
dozens of exterior paint solutions.
Coblitz finally landed on a shade of
dark blue that looks black in cer-tain light conditions, while others
highlight the depth of the navy. He
also worked with the Singer team
to change all the metal trim to
dark nickel, something no other
customer had requested. He even
came up with a name for the car
that Singer turned into a dark
nickel-plated aluminum alloy
nameplate on the rear deck lid:
SINQNON, a reference to the
Latin for “essential to existence,”
sine qua non.
“I don’t usually name my cars,”
Coblitz says. “But it was my take
on Rob’s ‘everything is important’
mantra.” He’s referring to a now-
hallowed moment early on at the
Singer headquarters when Dickin-
son, frustrated by others not
grasping the depth of his desire for
perfection, grabbed a can of black
spray paint and memorialized
those words on the shop wall.
It’s time, though, to rip the
bandage off and talk price. A 91 1
reimagined by Singer will set you
back a minimum of $475,000 for a
classic coupe, not including the
car each customer must provide.
In today’s collector-car market,
that base vehicle can cost $48,000
and up. (Singer Vehicle Design
isn’t a dealer, but the company canoffer some direction.)“There’s a
high cost to what we do. Every-
thing we do doesn’t have to be
expensive, but it does have to be
brilliant. I only want to build cars
that make my mouth go dry I want
them so much.”
That may not sound like a
winning business model — the
road is littered with failed at-
tempts to restore, modify, hot rod
or otherwise tweak famous models
— but against all odds, Singer is
celebrating its 10th anniversary
this year and steadily growing.
The company has delivered 130
cars and has as many on order.
Dickinson’s vision, while laser-
focused on making brilliant mach-
ines, also has a restless side. Last
year the company debuted an
ultra-rare, limited-edition version
referred to as the DLS. It was
co-created with the engineering
arm of the U.K.-based Williams
Formula 1 team, Michelin and
other partners. Only 75 will be
made, with a base price of $1.8
million.
The company’s design stand-
ards have branched out beyond
automotive. In 2017, Dickinson
collaborated with Italian watch
designer Marco Borraccino, for-
mer head designer at Panerai. The
resulting company, Singer Re-
imagined, is creating high-end
watches that pay homage to the
iconic sports models of the 1960s
and 1970s.
And while he won’t comment
on his plans, Dickinson says he’s
only just begun to apply his aes-
thetic to other objects he deeply
desires.
I asked him when, in the flurry
of the last 10 years’ worth of hard
labor, occasional cash flow worries
and scaling a custom-car business
into a limited-production concern,
he picked his head up and realized
his success. “The first time, it was
walking into a Starbucks in North-
ern England and being recognized
— not for my music but because
they’d seen all of our car videos on
YouTube and were die-hard fans,”
Dickinson says. “The second
moment was when my son saw a
journalist interviewing Jay-Z while
driving together in one of our cars.
He turned from the TV to look at
me with an awe and respect I’d
never seen before.”DRIVEN
A Porsche 911 the way you want it
THISSinger-customized Porsche 911 has striped espresso suede seats and an ebony shift knob.Drew PhillipsSinger Vehicle DesignBy Sue Callaway
Nov. 17-Jan. 5
Descanso Gardens’ Enchanted Forest of
Light is a gentle one-mile walk through the
gardens, highlighting some of the most
popular locations with large-scale light
displays. New this year is a “magical
‘stained-glass’ ” creation at Mulberry
Pond by contemporary sculptor Tom
Fruin. Students from California School of
the Arts will perform Dec. 6-7 and 13-14.
Member-only nights Dec. 20-23 and 26-28.
General admission tickets start at $30;
members pay $5 less. Children 2 and
younger, free. Tickets must be purchased
in advance. descansogardens.org
Nov. 19
Aquatic gardener David Gardnerof
Sunland Water Gardens discusses plant
breeding, water lilies and edible aquatics
during the monthly meeting of the South-
ern California Garden Club in the Sepul-
veda Garden Center, 16633 Magnolia Blvd.,
Encino. The meeting includes a fundraiser
plant market and country store at 9:30
a.m., a business meeting at 10:20 a.m. and
the speaker at 11 a.m. A bring-your-own
lunch follows at noon, with the club pro-
viding beverages and dessert. Free.
socalgardenclub.org
Nov. 23-24
Landfill to Landscape in Altadena:
Hands-on Hugelkultur/Bioswale Work-
shops These two-day rain garden and
bioswale workshops by Shawn Maestretti
Garden Architecture are $20 a day, with a
$10 refund on Day 2 if participants attend
both days. Hugelkulturis a technique for
creating raised garden beds using logs,
branches and other clippings covered with
soil. Rain gardens and bioswales are tech-
niques for collecting, filtering and storing
excess water. Specific location to be an-
nounced Nov. 20. 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day.
smgarchitecture.comDec. 3-8, 10-15, 17-23 & 26-30
San Diego Botanic Garden’s Holiday
Nights in the Gardenpromises family-
friendly activities such as a nightly “snow-
fall” and a play area with real snow, visits
with Santa (through Dec. 23), holiday
crafts, a 10-foot poinsettia tower and a
“romantic mistletoe hideaway” (to keep
parents busy perhaps while the kids are
tossing snowballs?). Admission ranges
from $25 for nonmembers on weekends to
$17 for children 3-17; at 230 Quail Gardens
Drive in Encinitas. SDBGarden.orgDec. 5-8, 12-15, 19-22
Nights of 1,000 Lights at Sherman Li-
brary & Gardenscelebrates the holidays
with a garden light show and music. Tick-
eted guests get free photos with Santa, a
chance to make a traditional Scandina-
vian Julehjerter(heart-shaped Christmas
decoration), and coffee, hot chocolate and
s’mores around a bonfire. Beer, wine and
other food on sale. $15 members, $25 non-
members, children 3 and under free. 6 to 9
p.m. at 2647 E. Coast Highway in Corona
del Mar. slgardens.orgIf you have a plant-related class, garden
tour or other event you’d like us to
mention, email jeanette.marantos@
latimes.com — at least three weeks in
advance — and we may include it. Send a
high-resolution horizontal photo, if
possible, and tell us what we’re seeing and
whom to credit.VISITORSwalk through Descanso Gardens’ 2016 Enchanted Forest of Light.Francine OrrLos Angeles TimesGARDENING NOTEBOOK
Be enchanted by a forest
of light and magical glass