After years of development, careful planning, and design, I am very proud to announce that we are offering a production version of the Specter Sports Car.
Soon after beginning my project “The Specter,” it became clear to me that I don’t want to do anything else but design and build very special cars. And to me, there is nothing more special than something one of a kind — not a reimagining, not a resto-mod, not a kustom. A true blank sheet, all-new thing — carefully thought out and lovingly crafted by hand on a boutique scale.
So, over the past several years, alongside my normal day-to-day work, I have sacrificed everything to create a prototype and prove the concept to myself. It was important to me to build the car by hand and learn every square inch of it. I wanted to understand perfectly how my idea could exist not in theory but in reality. And now I know. Even with all of its flaws and quirks, it is a truly wonderful car that possesses all of the qualities that make a true sports car perfect.
Now I have made all the preparations and designed every detailed process to be able to produce this special car for others who share my same passion, vision, and enthusiasm — and would like to push the formula one step further.
With this context, I look forward to sharing my prototype with you in person at Quail next Friday, and then in Los Angeles the following week, in a venue to be announced.
Thank you for reading. Please share with your friends, and visit specterdesign.com for more information about our new offering.
I’m very proud to share these photos which I submitted as part of my application to display the Specter at the Quail in August. Regardless of the outcome of the application, I’m very proud of myself and my small team for getting the car to this point and achieving the goal of applying on time. We still have some work to do mechanically before August- but for now this feels like a big milestone in my career, and my biggest achievement in design and engineering.
Coachbuilding is one of the oldest crafts in the automotive world. Before manufacturers stamped bodies by the thousands, individual makers shaped aluminum by hand around a chassis, one panel at a time, until something entirely new emerged.
Tanner Boyes of @specterdesign learned that craft and spent the better part of a decade applying it to something he had always believed in: a Porsche 356.
The result is The Specter. A one-off, alloy-bodied special built around genuine Porsche 356 mechanicals, the engine, transaxle, suspension, brakes, and steering all untouched. What surrounds them is Tanner’s own hand, a slippery hand-formed aluminum body mounted to a specially designed triangulated space frame, conceived and built in his workshop in San Clemente, California. A specials tradition that stretches back to postwar Europe, executed by a craftsman who grew up obsessing over cars the same way earlier generations obsessed over them, as a medium for creative expression that happens to move.
The Specter makes a rare appearance at Air|Water on April 25 in Costa Mesa. A car unlike anything else on the floor, and a reminder that the most interesting Porsches have always been the ones that push furthest from the expected.
April 25. Costa Mesa. Tickets at air-water.com, link in bio.
#AirWater #Porsche #SpecterDesign #Coachbuilt
X-RAY VISION!! You’ll need it for this subject near and dear to my heart- Space frame chassis’. This portion of the project took a long time and a lot of thought. I buried my nose in old books, and picked smart people’s brains constantly to come up with what I feel is a key piece to the Specter car design. I don’t mention the specifics in this video, but making a true space frame poses a lot of challenges, like making the car easy to get in and out of (re Mercedes gullwing) as well as the complexity of welding a ton of joints and planning each node and how those nodes transfer loads through the chassis evenly. In the end it is one of the parts of the car I’m most proud of and ironically now invisible. But you feel it and everything that went into it when you drive the car, like going over a speed bump and the doors don’t chatter (not normal in an old open sportscar) thanks for watching and sharing these goofy videos!
#spaceframe #chassis #cardesign #sportscar #vintageporsche
Everything you wanted to know about old car paint! Nitrocellulose Lacquers and their forgotten advantages!
This video was over 15 minutes and I had to utterly butcher it down to fit everything in 3 minutes or less. But this nitrocellulose lacquer research has been a big project of mine for years now. I’m always anxious to learn about the history and science of old cars, and apply it to what I do in practical ways. This was one of the most exciting and interesting examples of that on my Porsche Special. Send this to someone who may find it interesting! #Vintagecars #history #nitrocelluloselacquer #chemistry #rare
Hey Mister! Everything you wanted to know about Sportscar Specials, and the one that I made called the “Specter Sports”
Share with anyone with an affinity for history, craft, design and engineering! #vintageporsche #handmade #rare #design #carsandcoffee
@spencerjsanderson took these beautiful photos of the Specter Porsche Special at our launch event in Utah last month. It’s fun to lock this surreal moment in time with photographs as new developments with Specter continue to unfold and I really have no idea what unexpected turns this journey has in store for us this year- but I’m wide open with high hopes and pure optimism. Thanks everyone for supporting and being here 🥂
Few weeks back I got to attend @tanner.boyes unveiling of his beautiful @specterdevelopment Porsche special. An absolutely beautiful, one of a kind, hand buit creation! This is what I saw that night at @wasatch.studio
Thank you for having me!
#porsche #356 #specter #coachbuilt #utahcars
I wanted to thank everyone who came out to our Utah Launch party, the support was incredible. It was so exciting to share the prototype in its finished a state with my local friends and family, many of whom have been directly involved or witnessing the various steps to get to where we are with this project over the recent years. We are excited to be barreling headfirst into the the next chapter of the of Specter Design and feeling the excitement around this- in person- with you really gave me a boost to keep going. We are hunkering down now through the winter and focusing all efforts onto producing some incredibly special cars. I look forward to sharing those next steps with you in the near future! Much love! -Tanner
Thank you to the various friends who took these photos and sent them over
To realize a dream of any size puts you in the 1%. To realize a dream as big as what @tanner.boyes had in mind puts you in a category of one.
Thank you @specterdesign for having us out for this special event. Witnessing something like this come to life is a once in a lifetime opportunity!
@tanner.boyes hosted an incredible event at the studio tonight. He pulled off something very few people could.
@specterdesign@specterdevelopment
#wasatchstudio #specterdesign #Porsche #PorscheLife #PorscheLove #PorscheNation #PorscheClub #PorscheFamily #PorscheLifestyle #PorscheMoment #PorscheObsessed #PorschePerformance #PorschePower #PorscheGoals #Porsche911 #PorscheTurbo #CarLifestyle #CarEnthusiast #CarCulture #Supercar #DreamCar #GermanEngineering
