Blue Wonder: Alois Ruf and the sixth 901 ever built

Alois Ruf

Porsche Newsroom: As a teenager, Alois Ruf sees an early predecessor of the Porsche 911 on the autobahn, which ultimately ignites a lifelong passion. And what sounds like fiction is, in fact, actually true: around 50 years later, he discovers the car in Enamel Blue in his own garage. In April 1964, a young Alois Ruf catches a glimpse of his future on the autobahn A 8 near Günzburg in Bavaria, halfway between Munich and Stuttgart. Riding in an Opel Rekord with his father, 14-year-old Alois is gazing out the rain-streaked window when a blue car suddenly appears and speeds past in a cloud of grey mist, the sound of the tires drowned out by a brief, but mighty, roar.

The 901 prototype shown with a later 911 in the background.

Alois, a car enthusiast and subscriber to the hobby technology magazine, knows at once that it must have been the new Porsche 2000 – that’s what the magazine called the prototype from Zuffenhausen. Though mere fractions of a second, they mark the beginning of a deep passion that exists to this day. “We were impressed,” says Alois Ruf, director of the Porsche service center in Pfaffenhausen, recalling the encounter on the autobahn. “Now I know it was the first Porsche of that kind I had ever seen. Or heard. Crazy!”