German manufacturer RUF Automobile has debuted a new prototype eight-cylinder boxer engine at the 2026 Goodwood Festival of Speed.
Housed in a mule car based on the company’s CTR3 mid-engine chassis, known internally as the Erprober (German for ‘tester’), the in-house-developed 4.8-liter twin-turbocharged unit produces over 1,000hp and 1,000Nm of torque. The car will appear in the Supercar Run twice daily from Friday, July 10, through Sunday, July 12, driven by Tanner Foust, and will be on static display in the Supercar Paddock across the event.
The B8 is a development testbed rather than a production model, evaluating technologies intended for a future RUF vehicle. Development has involved extensive testing across thousands of kilometers, with lubricant partner Motul supporting the program through its range of high-performance lubricants.
“There are moments in a company’s history that define the future,” said company co-owner Alois Ruf. “For RUF, the boxer-eight is one of those moments. A boxer-eight has never been part of our story, or anyone else’s in this form, so we decided to write a new chapter in automotive history. We look forward to letting the engine speak for itself at Goodwood.”
The chassis required stretching by 100mm to accommodate the extra cylinder pair, which drives through a RUF 6-speed manual transmission. The CTR3 was chosen as the test platform to enable the engine’s performance to be evaluated in a high-performance environment while the program remained low-profile.
Though unable to delve into great detail – it is still early days for the project – RUF chief engineer Marc Brunner explained to APTI, “I think the idea has been brewing for many years in the head of Alois Ruf. We’ve always loved the boxer engine, the boxer-six. It’s in our DNA, it’s in our passion. You want to go bigger? Well, just add more cylinders, so we thought let’s go for it. It’s an emotional project, it’s a passion project, and we’re happy that we have an engine running that we can actually run tests and further develop.”
Though unable to provide many insights, Brunner did reveal that the architecture of the engine (which uses a cast rather than a billet crankcase) was based on the company’s CTR Anniversary engine, which was inspired in turn by the Porsche Metzger engines. “For this project we took that and expanded to eight cylinders,” he says. There were some challenges with the extended crankshaft but “we worked with our supplier to get the best of both worlds; we are familiar with the boxer structure and they’re familiar with crankshafts.”
The CTR3 test vehicle running at Goodwood features a bespoke livery created in collaboration with Aloisa Ruf and Optima Batteries, drawing on the yellow associated with the original CTR Yellowbird. The flowing graphic design incorporates the number eight, referencing the B8 designation.
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