Gooding Christie's will offer the unique RUF Project Dragon at its Retromobile New York auction in November. The car will cross the block without reserve and carries a $6 million to $8 million estimate. It will be the first public sale of a machine created as a highly personal factory commission for a dedicated RUF collector.
Project Dragon is catalogued as a 1998 RUF because it was built around the final unused W09 body-in-white retained by the company from the CTR2 era. The actual commission was completed much later. Its owner worked directly with Alois Ruf and the RUF team, while Tony Hatter, best known for his design work on the 993-generation Porsche 911, helped shape the car. RUF delivered the finished Project Dragon in March 2024.
The body uses bespoke carbon-fiber components finished in the one-off Dragon Fire Orange color. Underneath are an integrated RUF roll cage, carbon-ceramic brakes, Bilstein PSS10 suspension and center-lock wheels created for the project by OZ Racing. Gooding Christie's lists an air-cooled engine producing 621 hp at 6,500 rpm. The odometer showed only 759 miles when the car was catalogued.
That combination makes Project Dragon unusual even by RUF standards. It is neither a conventional restoration of a CTR2 nor a modern conversion of a completed Porsche. Instead, RUF used a surviving body from the original era as the basis for a factory-built one-off, combining the visual character of the CTR2 Sport with engineering and manufacturing work carried out decades later.
Before the auction, Project Dragon is scheduled for public display at Christie's Rockefeller Center from October 8 through October 12. The Retromobile New York sale takes place on November 20 and 21. With no reserve and no previous public transaction for the car, the result will provide the first direct market valuation of this singular RUF commission.