Handcrafting a Classic

The Aston Martin DB4 G.T. Continuation and the Heritage Center

I remember my dad driving us kids through the small town of Newport Pagnell on our way to Santa Pod, Britain’s only dragstrip in the 60s. As we entered the town we’d often see Aston Martin workers pushing car bodies on dollies across the street from one part of the factory to the other. For a car-crazy kid, it was an exciting if odd vision but one that stuck in my memory.

Since it was established in 1913, Aston Martin, like many bespoke car companies, has gone through some ups and downs but is currently enjoying a resurgence with a strong, worldwide market for classic and supercars. While the production of Aston Martin vehicles has moved to Gaydon, a stone’s throw from Shakespeare’s home of Stratford-upon-Avon, the old Newport Pagnell factory has been tastefully converted to the Heritage Center (AMHC) where all Astons are serviced. It’s also where they restore classic Aston’s and build the DB4 G.T. Continuation Car.

Work started on the DB4 in 1956 and it was shown to the public at the London Motor Show in 1958. With a 4-seater body designed by Carrozzeria Touring of Milan, using their ‘Superleggera’ construction method in which aluminum panels are fixed to a tubular frame built onto a substantial platform chassis, and a new DOHC 3.7L, six-cylinder, all alloy engine designed by Tadek Marek, the DB4 was an instant hit. It had a top speed of 140 mph and was the first production car capable of 0-100-0 mph in under 30 seconds. That was fast until 1959 when they announced the G.T. version that upped the ante to 152 mph. The G.T. accelerated from 0-60 mph in 6.4 seconds. Of course, the next model, the DB5, became iconic as James Bond’s car of choice.

They only built 75 cars originally and of those only eight were lightweights. Those originals can now command prices north of $3 million and as a consequence of the growing interest in all things nostalgic and fast a business plan was developed to build just 25 continuation lightweight cars. Not unsurprisingly, all 25 were sold upon announcement and they are currently being built entirely at the AMHC where we got to view the process.

In order to enable the build, a number of DB4s were purchased, disassembled, and measured for replication.  The team at Aston also studied some 450 original drawings and fabricated exacting bucks in order to get it right. However, some key areas were upgraded to take advantage of technological developments. For example, the roll cage, the brakes, the fuel tank, the seats and even some of the engine components were improved. The new old engine has a capacity increased from 3.7 to 4.2 liters and now produces around 340 bhp compared to the original’s 302 and the gearbox features tougher, straight-cut gears. Also, the suspension has firm rose joints rather than squidgy rubber bushes.

Aston also utilized many of the original suppliers such as Borrani who faithfully reproduce the 16-inch wire wheels. Even the leather comes from Connolly or Bridge of Weir who have been supplying hides to Aston for decades.

Each continuation car is hand built and assembled and takes an estimated 4,500 hours to complete and therefore the estimated price tag of almost $2 million seems reasonable. However, what was most refreshing about seeing the DB4 G.T. get built was seeing it get built by hand rather than by robots. There’s something emotionally satisfying about watching a craftsman take a flat sheet of aluminum and beat it into a sensuous, three-dimensional form.

McLaren Technology Centre

Of course, I’d heard about it, everybody in the supercar business has heard about it, but few have had the opportunity to tour the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC). Located near Woking, 30 miles southwest of London, England, and close to the historic Brooklands race circuit, the MTC is amazing. Nothing quite prepares you for rounding the corner at the McLaren Thought Leadership Centre and taking the long curving drive beside the lake that is overshadowed by the sweeping building designed by Norman Foster & Partners. The word “building”, however, is insufficient to describe this yin-yang inspired Taj Mahal to motorsports.

The Technology Centre provides a headquarters for the McLaren Group and is designed to reflect the company’s design and engineering expertise. It includes design studios, laboratories and production and testing facilities, including their own 145-meter long wind tunnel, for Formula One and high-performance sports cars. 

What’s cool about the MTC is that it enjoys an incredibly low carbon footprint and uses the lake water and heat exchangers to keep the air temp inside the building a comfortable 22 degrees Centigrade (72 Fahrenheit). When the wind tunnel is in use, the water gets hot, so it’s cycled out of the building, flowing out and down a stepped wall. This releases the heat, oxygenates the water, and ensures the lake never freezes during a British winter.

While no figures are given for what the central building cost, I was told that the adjacent, 32,000 square meter Production Centre cost around £60 million to build (that equates to around $70 million today but back when it was built, between 1999 and 2003, that was about double or, $120 million).

Upon my arrival, I was directed to park in Ron Dennis’ space. Ron, of course, was the man behind the phenomenal growth of McLaren. New Zealand racing driver Bruce McLaren founded the company in 1963. Unfortunately, Bruce died in 1970 and the remains of his company merged with Ron Dennis’ Project Four Racing in 1981. Ron is well known for his obsessive attention to detail and when designing the new Production Centre took the floor tiles home in order to calculate how big the building could be to use the minimum number of tiles with no cutting. It’s exactly the size he dictated.

As he is no longer with the company, I got Ron’s parking space and was met by none other than Bruce McLaren’s lovely daughter Amanda who was to show me around. We began our tour in the lobby where we checked out the cars beginning with Bruce’s Austin 7 Ulster that he raced in New Zealand as a boy aged 15—it’s a far cry from the current Formula 1 technology. Alongside the Austin was the Chevy-powered M8D Can-Am car that took McLaren and Denny Hulme to 39 race wins and five championships between 1967 and ’72. Alongside that was Hulme’s DFV-powered M19C of 1972. And so it went on, car after car until we came to a huge glassed-in shop that turned out to be the McLaren Formula 1 workshop. And while you’re not allowed to take photographs, for obvious reasons, you can stand and stare and just drool at the cleanliness and the attention to detail.

Eventually, Amanda dragged me past a line a McLaren F1 cars of the 2000s known as the ‘Silver Arrows’, a nod to the all-conquering original ‘unpainted’ Silver Arrows of the Pre-World War II Grand Prix era. The equally impressive line of late-70s F1 cars included the 1977 M26 of James Hunt—beautiful in its simplicity compared to the current F1 machines. Before I knew it, however, Amanda took me down a rabbit hole and through a long underground tunnel that connects the MTC to the Production Centre. Now, I’ve visited any number of car factories from Ferrari to Ford but I don’t think I have ever been so impressed. Again, no personal photos but here, in a pristine environment, several thousand workers, working two shifts assemble more than 4,000 McLaren road cars annually—everything from the 540C to the $1 million Senna (depending upon the prevailing exchange rate) and there was one sitting right in front of me. I could reach out and touch it.

For some, the Senna is a bit OTT as the Brits say. That means Over The Top, a bit too much, for some. But supercars are supposed to be a little OTT, are they not? At the heart of the Senna is the family’s 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 but here it is one of the most powerful McLaren road car engines ever, producing 800PS (789bhp) and 800Nm (590lb ft), with 700Nm (516lb ft) of torque available at just 3,000rpm. Designated M840TR, the powertrain features dry sump lubrication, a flat-plane crankshaft, and lightweight pistons and rods to reduce mass. Meanwhile, low-inertia, twin-scroll turbochargers and electronic wastegates deliver instantaneous throttle response. Max speed is 208 mph and the Senna accelerates from 0-62 mph in just 2.8 seconds.

Having worked as a young man in a pre-robot Chrysler factory, this facility was eye-opening, jaw-dropping, finger-lickin’ good. Still a lot of people scurrying around as the McLaren’s continue to be essentially hand built but there was a purpose about their actions, an obvious attention to detail and a pride in their workmanship. I could have watched it all day from the arrival of the carbon composite tub, through the assembly and on to the final monsoon soak test. It was fascinating. Unfortunately, I was dragged away; my tour was over with the promise of a drive when I got back to LA. Watch this space….

Goodwood FOS 2018

In the world of automotive events, The Goodwood Festival of Speed (FOS) is right up there on the bucket list with the Indy 500, Le Mans, Pebble Beach, the Daytona 500 and a few others. This year, the FOS celebrated its 25^th Silver Anniversary and The Dawg Box was there for the party.

For those of you who don’t know, the FOS takes place every summer on the grounds of The Duke of Richmond’s ancestral home 100 miles south-west of London, England. It’s basically a hill climb up the Duke’s 1.16-mile drive. The long-standing record for the dash is 41.6 seconds set by Nick Heidfeld in 1999 in a McLaren MP4/13 Formula One car. His average speed up the twisty, cambered driveway with some nasty sharp flint walls was 100.385 mph. Nick’s record remains unbroken as they no longer allow F1 cars timed runs for safety reasons but this year two electric cars came awfully close to breaking Nick’s record. It’s bound to fall soon.

By invitation only, the hill climb sees an eclectic field of racecars; everything from Duncan Pittaway’s fire belching, 28.5-liter, 4-cylinder 1911 Fiat The Beast of Turin to Ernie Nagamatsu’s historic Old Yeller Buick-powered road-racing special to Rod Millen’s Pikes Peak-winning Toyota Celica to electric and even autonomous cars with no drivers. Call me old-fashioned, but driverless cars to me seems a lot like slot car racing. While skill is involved, I just wonder if when you remove the human element you remove the point. It would be like climbing Mount Everest using virtual reality—who cares.

Ironically, This year’s fastest time was set by Frenchman Romain Dumas driving a Volkswagen ID R electric racecar in which Dumas recently won the Pikes Peak hill climb in Colorado. Dumas scorched up the hill in just 43.86 seconds. Second fastest was Peter Dumbreck driving the NIO EP9 electric supercar. Dumbreck made the dash in a staggering 44.32 seconds.

It’s a sign of the times that the fields of Goodwood are now littered with supercars. Everywhere you looked there were lines of Lambos, Ferraris, Aston Martins, McLarens, Koenigseggs, Paganis, Porsche and all the other exclusive brands. Time was they were a rarity on British roads but no longer. McLaren was, in fact, our host and we shall be reporting on our tour of the McLaren Technology Center soon.

One of the most appealing aspects of the FOS is the up-close-and-personal access to the cars and the drivers, particularly if you are a Formula One fan. You can get within a few inches of the cars, check them out, hear them run, and meet and greet the mechanics and the drivers. I don’t know of anywhere else you can do that in such a casual atmosphere. There were displays from all the teams including Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull, Mercedes, Lotus, and Alfa. There was even a display of driverless electric racecars from Robocar.

 

Isle of Man TT

The hills were alive with the sound of motorcycles. So too were the towns, back alleys, and all corners of the Isle of Man. It was the first week of June 2018 and the races were in full swing.

The words “Isle of Man Tourist Trophy” conjure up images of motorcycles doing power wheelies down city streets past old Manx cottages and blasting full throttle over mountain passes. These images are usually accompanied with a starry-eyed response, “Someday I’ll go see the races.” Well, I finally had my day. I could rehash the statistics of each race, but instead here’s what I learned and experienced in total during my first trip to the IoM TT.

To many, the TT is the pinnacle of motorcycle road racing and I was certainly not alone to have a trip there placed prominently atop the “bucket list.” I decided it was finally time to stop dreaming and just book it. That is, book it a year in advance, as hotels and ferries sell out quickly. Approximately 45,000 race fans flock to the island where the regular population floats around 84,000. For my maiden European vacation, I flew into Manchester, UK and took a train to the port of Liverpool. From there, the ferry took me and a couple hundred motorcyclists across the glassy Irish Sea to Douglas, the islands capital and largest town. Being the start/finish of the TT course, the city of Douglas has the large grandstands, the paddock, the scoreboard, the crowds of people, and all kinds of nightlife.

My original plan upon arrival was to rent a bicycle to access the different vantage points along the race course, but the islands abundant public transport quickly proved itself. Buying one reasonably-priced “Go” card granted me access to island-wide busses, electric trains, and even a horse-drawn tram. (Unfortunately, I never got to ride the steam train. Next time!) This card was also quite useful for sightseeing on days the races weren’t running. As if the spectacle of the race isn’t enough, the island is full of that good ancient history with castles to explore West in Peel and South in the aptly named Castletown, plus the world’s largest operational waterwheel in the old mining town of Laxey. I quickly learned that the trick is to buy an official TT race pin from almost any of these destinations, with which access is granted to a wide variety of other sights and locations at no extra charge. It paid for itself.

Thanks to a lot of wishful thinking on my part, or maybe just good luck, we were treated with perfect weather for the duration. Fans and racers alike were fortunate because it was this weather that offered ideal track conditions to generate new records in every category – Superbike, Superstock, Supersport, Lightweight, Zero (electric) and Sidecar. It certainly seemed that every lap of every race all week long was a new record. Possibly the biggest news was Peter Hickmans new lap record of 135.452 mph aboard the Tyco BMW S1000RR, which also established the Isle of Man TT as the fastest road race in the world.

Maybe it goes without saying, but I do want to emphasize just how different the TT is in person as opposed to the condensed versions on television or youtube. The race categories are six, four, and one-lap affairs over the 37.73-mile Snaefell Mountain course, taking more time and with many more competitors than what is shown in the highlight reels. The longest of the races is just over 226 miles, but even the short Zero races have the same rider requirements of intense focus; assessing road and weather variables as they pass in a blur, all while dancing with a screaming motorcycle. Every upcoming corner must be known and anticipated all while still reacting to the corner preceding it. The physical and mental tasks at this speed leave little to no room for error. It’s almost unbelievable to watch and certainly difficult to distinguish between the beginning of a loss of control or someone who is still maintaining it, albeit on the very edge. 

Although they’re gone in a flash, the vision lingers. For the solo competitors, the mental image is of both tires in the air, crossed-up handlebars, and some knees and a helmet bouncing off the gas tank. For the sidecar riders, it’s a sleek but brutal pounding as weight in the form of the passenger strategically positions his or herself for every feature of the course. Watching all racers and passengers control and recover from this wildly dynamic environment leaves one in awe.

With triumph comes tragedy and the TT has had its share over the years. It has been billed as the most dangerous motorsport event in the world. The island has now claimed 257 competitors in its century of TT and Grand Prix races as we sadly lost riders Dan Kneen and Adam Lyon this year. Facing these statistics is truly a testament to the bravery of the racers, the dangers they face, and the respect they deserve.

A spectators job is to stay out of the way. Don’t drop your drink or camera onto the race course and absolutely do not step foot out there while the road is closed. While that might mean you get locked into one view of the race, there are pedestrian bridges over the course at a few of the popular locations, and provisions regularly along the way through at least the southern stretches.

On the first day, a Saturday, I had a seat in the Douglas grandstands, actually a permanent brick fixture on the public road year-round. This race maintains some old charm. There are no flashy jumbotrons, the pits just in front are relatively quiet and minimalistic, and the leaderboard across the road is hand-painted and attended to by a group of scouts who keep busy running around to stay updated. Watching each rider start off from here and disappear over the horizon, I could only imagine what’s on their mind. Returning safely must be priority number one. The paddock behind the stands was easily accessible. Food and facilities were plentiful. You can experience a nice motorcycle race from here.

For Mondays viewing, I connected with a friend of a friend who had access to a private residence on the track. What a thrill that was, leaned on the old rock wall with a small group as the racers blazed a trail inches from your face. At one point I discovered that I was watching the races next to John McGuinness, practically Isle of Man TT royalty. McGuinness is the winningest living TT competitor, second in overall wins only to the late legend Joey Dunlop. Normally McGuinness would be racing here but he is still on the mend from a crash last year at the North West 200. As each bike in each race passed by, he would quietly identify the rider and comment to his family seated at his other side. He said riders passing this point were going about 180 mph. I won’t forget that experience for quite a while.

On Wednesday, I took the charming old electric train up Snaefell Mountain to the Bungalow with my camping chair over my shoulder. Just shy of the mountain peak, scenic views of puffy white sheep on distant green hills were readily apparent thanks to that perfect weather. Climbing a little higher to the summit allowed me to very faintly see Scotland. If I used a little imagination, I might even see Ireland, England, and Wales. They are indeed visible in the right conditions, but it was a little hazy in the distance. No problem. Practically anywhere around the Bungalow was a great spot to watch the race as there are several turns and a straight all within view, whether up on the hill or with your toes right at the track, both vantage points I investigated. When the television helicopter would rise up over the hills, it was a signal that the race leader would shortly come screaming into view.

For the final races on Friday, I posted up at the grandstands in front of Creg-ny-Baa. I got to see Mr. McGuinness again, this time waving to a cheering crowd on a pre-race parade lap aboard the Norton SG7, hands-down the nicest sounding combustion-engine bike of the whole event. I make the distinction because the electric Mugen of the Zero races had a very nice, unexpected howl as it scooted past. The Creg-ny-Baa corner is a slight downhill right and I was in the grandstands just past the outside of the apex. In hindsight, I didn’t need to sit right there as both sides offered nice long views on approach and departure. The races offer time to investigate optimal viewing locations and I found a nice secondary spot on a grassy wall on the approach side.

The 2018 TT ended with ample time for weekend travel for a sobering return to work early Monday morning. On my trip back, I was talking to a regular race visitor and we concluded that when I attend another TT, I should fly into Dublin and stay on the island in Peel. I left this trip with immense appreciation for the history of the island and a greater insight into what actually happens at the races that simply gets lost in the video editing room. This is a truly fantastic location and the race is like no other. It needs to be witnessed in person.