964 backdate.
A 1973 RS tribute, coaxed from a 1992 donor car across eighteen months of Bay 4 occupancy and one remarkably patient client.
Our client had owned the donor car for nineteen years. He wanted us to end his relationship with it.
He'd bought the 1992 Carrera 2 Cabriolet in 2006, when 964s were still cheap. It had served him well — 130,000 miles, a weekend car turned daily, turned weekend again as children arrived and went to college and then left. In 2024, he called Rick. He was thinking about a Singer commission, and he'd been on the list for four years, but he'd recently watched a client video from Williams in Los Angeles and realized something. He didn't want a reimagining. He wanted his car — the one he'd owned for nearly two decades — transformed into the 1973 RS he'd originally coveted and never been able to justify.
We don't typically take restomod commissions. We turned down three in the same twelve-month window. But this one had the right shape — a single donor, a clear target, a client who'd been looking at the same cars in the same garages for two decades. He wasn't chasing a trend. He was closing a loop.
Build specification
The target wasn't a 1973 RS. The target was what a 1973 RS felt like.
Our client was clear on this point from the first conversation. He wasn't interested in numbers-matching period correctness. He wasn't chasing auction-grade provenance. What he wanted was the sensation of a 1973 RS — the narrow hips, the ducktail, the mechanical connection, the raw shape of a car designed in a time when crash regulations permitted a hood that ended eight inches ahead of your windshield wipers. That feel.
This gave Rick latitude that pure restoration work wouldn't. The 964 donor platform is mechanically superior to a 1973 car in nearly every way — galvanized body, multi-link rear suspension, updated electrical architecture, much-improved brakes. Hiding those advantages under a 1973 silhouette is the whole point of the backdate movement. You get the emotional honesty of the early car with the daily-driver reliability of the later one. It's not a compromise. It's the inverse of compromise.
What we kept.
We kept the 964 floor pan, firewall, A-pillars, and roof. We kept the MacPherson front suspension and the multi-link rear. We kept the galvanized body shell (every 964 is factory galvanized — this matters for Florida salt air). We kept the original VIN stamp and the factory build plate, both of which are worth more preserved than restored. And we kept the client's original key fob, which had been in his pocket for nineteen years.
What we changed.
Everything else. Fenders, hood, bumpers, trunk lid, engine lid, rockers, mirrors, interior, dashboard, seats, carpets, headliner, wiring harness from the firewall forward, suspension, brakes, wheels, tires, exhaust, fuel system, cooling system (oil-cooler routing to the front valence per period-correct specification), and the engine itself — which we bored out from the factory 3.6L to a 3.8L using an RSR-spec cylinder and piston set.
Eighteen months, six milestone dates.
Every build at Apex is tracked against a written milestone schedule. We update the client at each milestone with photos, receipts, and a written progress note. Below is the condensed version of this build's milestone log — the full internal log runs to 147 pages.
Teardown, assessment, and donor documentation
Car arrived on an enclosed trailer from the client's Tequesta home on August 14, 2024. First week: full teardown to body-in-white, every component cataloged and photographed. Donor was in better condition than expected — roof skin factory, floor pans factory, no accident damage. One rocker panel had been partially repaired (not to our standard) and was flagged for replacement. Factory VIN and build plate confirmed, photographed, and preserved.
Mechanical baseline: engine showed 130,400 miles but had been rebuilt at 87,000. Compression good, no bearing wear, clean oil history in the binder the client had kept from 2006 forward. Transmission was tired (synchros worn on 2nd and 3rd) — factored into the scope.
Narrow-body conversion, new fenders, ducktail fabrication
This was the single most labor-intensive phase of the build. Conversion to 1973 RS narrow-body silhouette required complete replacement of all four fenders (factory-produced reproduction shells from a specialist in North Carolina), new hood (longer nose to match RS proportions), new engine lid with integrated ducktail, new front and rear bumpers, and reshaping of the rocker panels.
Each fender was hand-fit — no two of these reproduction shells arrive the same, and getting them to sit correctly against the original roof and A-pillar took Rick and one body specialist (James from Pompano) roughly 180 combined hours. We documented every panel gap measurement before and after. The engine lid with ducktail was particularly involved — the reproduction unit arrives as an unpainted shell requiring internal bracing and drain coordination.
3.6L to 3.8L conversion with RSR pistons
Engine came out for the build in mid-October. After full disassembly and crack-testing of the case halves (both clean), we sent the case to Richter Motorsports in Georgia for machining — line-bore, cylinder-spigot clearancing for the larger RSR-spec pistons, and new cam-bearing tunnels. Crankshaft was balanced with the new piston-and-rod assembly. Cylinder heads received a full porting job (mild, not radical — the client wasn't interested in a race-spec engine), new valve seats, new guides, 3-angle valve job, and the factory throttle bodies were retained but re-calibrated.
Final dyno numbers on our own in-house dyno: 385 HP at the crank (385 was the target), 312 lb-ft at 4,800 RPM, flat torque curve from 3,200 RPM up. Engine was broken in over 25 hours on the dyno at progressively heavier loads before reinstallation.
Chassis stiffening, KW Clubsport install, brake upgrade
Body shell received seam-welding at 14 critical locations per the period race-prep specification, then a front chassis brace and rear strut-tower brace. KW Clubsport 3-way adjustable dampers installed all four corners, torsion-bar front suspension converted from the 964-spec coil-over to an RS-appropriate (and period-correct) torsion bar setup. Adjustable sway bars front and rear.
Brake conversion: 996 GT3 front calipers (4-piston Brembo) on 350mm rotors, 993-spec rear calipers on 330mm rotors. Stainless steel brake lines front to rear. Master cylinder upgraded. Pedal box reconfigured for the larger master cylinder piston. Full bleed with Pentosin DOT 4 Super.
Light Ivory with red RS script, black houndstooth interior
Paint went on in early July after three months of body prep work. Color is Light Ivory — the factory 1973 code, sourced through Glasurit's heritage color program with period-correct base/clear spec. Red "Carrera RS" script was hand-painted by the client's specified letterer (Steven Rich in Miami, a third-generation specialist). Stripes ran along the rocker panels in matching red. Every painted panel was baked at factory temperature and allowed to cure for 30 days before any interior work resumed.
Interior is black houndstooth in period-correct pattern, reproduced by a specialist in Pennsylvania. Recaro shells (original 1973 RS specification) sourced from a long-time Apex supplier, re-foamed and re-upholstered. Dashboard retrimmed in black vinyl with period-correct gauge cluster — VDO tachometer, speedometer, oil temp, oil pressure, fuel level. No radio. No air conditioning (client specified).
Shakedown, final assembly, client delivery
Final assembly completed mid-February 2026. 412-mile shakedown conducted across three sessions — Palm Beach International Raceway for dynamic evaluation, A1A south for real-world driving impressions, and one afternoon on the back roads west of Indiantown for a proper open-throttle run.
Car delivered to the client at our facility on March 8, 2026. Full binder of build documentation presented: 147-page build log, every receipt totaled and categorized, photo album of all 18 months of work, VIN-authentication certificate, corner-weight and alignment specification sheet, dyno trace, and a three-year maintenance plan starting with first-service at 1,000 miles. Client drove it home that afternoon. Took the long way.
Four decisions that defined the build.
Every build has a handful of choices that the owner will experience every time they start the car. These were ours, and each required multiple rounds of consultation with the client.
3.8L instead of 3.6L or 3.5L
The factory 1973 RS was a 2.7L. A purist backdate would use the 3.6L donor engine unchanged. A race-oriented build would push the engine to 3.9L or 4.0L. We chose 3.8L specifically because it's the sweet spot between stock reliability and meaningful power — the bores are still within factory-validated material thickness, the cooling margin is preserved, and the 385 HP output is honest rather than peaky.
> CASE : FACTORY 3.6L 964 · BORE : RSR-SPEC 102MM · PISTONS : MAHLEG50/03 with short-ratio first gear
The stock G50 transmission was rebuilt rather than replaced — the client wanted to preserve the drivetrain continuity from his original car. We shortened first gear (to a period-correct ratio common in RS tributes) and rebuilt the synchros, but kept the ratios 2-5 factory. This preserves the long-legged 5th for highway driving while giving the car the low-speed response the RS silhouette demands.
> CORE : ORIGINAL DONOR G50 · FIRST : 3.15 (SHORTENED) · 2-5 : FACTORYZero AC, zero radio, minimal sound deadening
Per client request, we deleted the entire HVAC system, the radio and speakers, the rear seats, and approximately 60% of the factory sound deadening. This saved roughly 180 pounds and — more importantly — restored the mechanical honesty that defines an air-cooled 911. You hear the engine. You hear the road. You hear everything. The client has now driven the car twice in Florida summer and reports that it is "fine, once you stop thinking about it."
> AC : REMOVED · RADIO : NONE · REAR SEATS : NONE · WEIGHT SAVED : 180 LBSKW Clubsport over coil-over conversion
Most 964 backdates use a coil-over front setup, which is mechanically simpler and gives tuners more range. We went the other direction — preserved the 964's torsion-bar front with KW Clubsport 3-way adjustable dampers. This is harder to set up (Rick spent two full days on the setup scales) but gives the car a period-correct weight transfer feel under braking and initial turn-in. The client reports that it "feels like an old car when you want it to and a modern car when you need it to."
> DAMPERS : KW CLUBSPORT 3-WAY · FRONT : TORSION BAR (RS SPEC) · CORNER-WEIGHTEDThree years of scheduled service, starting at 1,000 miles.
Every Apex build is delivered with a three-year maintenance plan baked into the proposal. For Build 01, first service is scheduled at 1,000 miles (or six months — whichever comes first) and consists of a full fluid change, valve-clearance check, corner-weight re-verification, and a full photo record of the car's condition after break-in.
Subsequent service intervals mirror factory 911 schedules — major at 15,000 miles, annual minor between. Because the engine is purpose-built to our spec, our records become the service history. Over the next three years the car will receive six scheduled visits to our shop, each of them documented and added to the original build binder.
The binder continues to grow for as long as the client owns the car. If he ever sells it, the binder stays with the vehicle. That's our commitment, and it's also how we protect the resale value of the work.
Delivered with
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