The Bugatti Veyron is back, Toyota GR GT & will hydrogen happen? | Episode 37

So we all had to sort of stay still,

so we didn't get in that way,

because no one knows where they're going.

Yeah.

Well, they're going there really far.

Yeah.

Hello, and welcome to the Evo podcast,

James Taylor with E for this one,

joined by Dickie Meaden.

Hi, James.

Sam Jenkins.

Hello.

And John Barker.

Hello.

And it's good to be back.

It's been a little while since we've all been

ran a table.

Blinking from Christmas tour, haven't we?

Slightly terrified by the oncoming magazine, Deadline.

Yeah, exactly.

But we've got loads to catch up on.

I've been looking at a one-off Bugatti.

Sam's been hands-on with the new Toyota GR GT sports car.

John's been doing some really high-tech stuff in Germany,

powered by AI and hydrogen.

And Dickie's been driving a kind of modern Kanan car,

designed by an F1 designer.

But before we get into any of that,

Sam, you've just got back from the Dakar,

and I'm really keen to hear how that goes.

I'm so envious of you for going there.

Yeah, I've never seen it before.

And I hadn't even been to many rally events before,

off-roading events.

I've done them on 24 hours a few times and N24.

And those events are obviously massive.

They're huge.

The scale of them is huge.

The grid is huge.

But Dakar, it's just, it's on another level.

It's ridiculous.

I think this year it was,

I can't remember the number, 450, 500 cars.

800 competitors.

So that's cars, trucks, bikes.

Yeah, yeah.

All different.

It must be like an army kind of event.

It is.

Where was it set of Saudi Arabia, wasn't it?

Saudi Arabia, yeah.

So we landed in Alula.

So that was where the Bivouac was that day,

or for those couple of days.

But the setup for two days, two or three days,

is like, it felt like Burning Man in the garden.

But it was just like for cars.

And it was only there for two days.

A lot of it's inflatable though, isn't it?

Some of it's areas and things.

A lot of the tents for servicing, they're inflatable.

But the number of service vehicles and people involved

is just crazy.

And it's over, I think the issue was 8,000 kilometers.

Right.

5,000 miles.

That was a good jump.

It's just, it's ridiculous.

Yeah, so it's fascinating.

And how remote is it?

Does it take like three different plane trips and?

Yeah, it was two plane trips for me.

Alula wasn't too bad.

Some stops are completely in the middle of nowhere.

I mean, if you're doing 5,000 miles across the desert,

some places are very remote.

How did you get around?

Because if it's pretty extreme.

Yeah, so we were there to see Defender and the D7XR.

It's that new stock class competitor.

And so we were in road car.

Defenders.

Were they octas that you were in or regular?

Sadly they weren't.

They were standard P400s, but they did the job.

We were going, we were traveling on routes

that hadn't been, that weren't planned.

So they'd looked on a map and instead of major,

they were reasonable, but they weren't set routes.

So we were going up some pretty steep dunes

with really deep sand and they were doing the job

in sand mode, of course.

Is it a circle that it travels?

It doesn't go from one point to another point.

Yeah, so it is a circle.

Yeah.

So you get to choose which bit you get to see.

Yeah, and you can, yeah, the way the routing

and the navigation works is crazy.

And so I think it's changed over the last few years,

but now the drives are given the navigation markers

on there, it's not GPS, but it's like a tablet in the car.

Five minutes before the start of the race.

They don't know where they're going before

that those five minutes.

And then there are just waypoints.

Yeah.

So between points, you're not told where you need to go.

So we went to spectate on top of a dune,

which should be fine.

It should be safe.

I guess you never know why they're coming.

The drivers don't know where they go.

They don't know where they need to go.

So we were watching cars sort of beneath us

in what looked like a reasonable path to the next waypoint.

But then we sort of turned around

and it was one of the race trucks behind us.

Oh, wow.

Sort of up like that where it couldn't see us

because the visibility in these cars is awful.

They can't turn their heads because of the headrests

and the hands, so we all had to sort of stay still.

So they, so we didn't get in their way

because no one knows where they're going.

Yeah.

Well, they're going there really far.

So it's an adventure just to actually watch it.

To spectate it.

Yeah, because there were no set spectating,

but spectators point feels a bit sketchy, to be honest,

but that looks exciting.

I was in footage of someone nearly being hit by a car.

They didn't care.

Well, yeah, I can see how that can happen

because there is no set track.

There's no set route.

So, and that's what it's about.

It's a big difference like Baja, isn't it?

Because Baja, there's a kind of a defined police,

so spectators are lining the course only, but yeah.

How much did the course vary?

Was it all sand and dunes,

or was there rocky bits and scrub?

I think it is mostly, it is mostly sand in Saudi Arabia

that everywhere we went was sand and dunes.

It looked like there was some waddies and stuff

in their dry river beds and one of the defenders.

One of the defenders had a bit of an incident.

Yeah, it was really low speed,

but because you can't see where you're going

and you haven't been there before.

Yeah.

They went down into sort of a...

It just kind of had the really lame,

you had all onto its side and it was fine

and they actually finished in a very good position.

That was left from Pettaholst, wasn't it?

Yeah, he won it one million times.

On bikes and cars, yeah.

And this debut of the D7, the new competitor,

it's the joining this production class,

which previously was it just forward,

I think, with the main guy?

Josh Theotos.

The Toyota, sorry.

Yeah, so it's just become really uncompetitive

in recent years.

It's just, the regulations have just become outdated.

Toyota were the only real competitor

and everyone was a bit bored of it.

It's gonna get really good, though, isn't it?

I saw some footage of a Toyota come through.

Looks pretty good, but it looked very much like a stock.

Like a road car.

Prepped car going across the desert.

And then the next shot was the defender coming through

and it was like...

The pace, the difference of pace.

Holy shit, it was like going to a trap day in the 911

and then seeing a GZ3 car come through.

It was nuts, so it's gonna,

that class is gonna be really big, I think,

because the top class cars are amazing,

but they're not really...

They're not relatable.

They're just off-road prototypes, aren't they?

Yeah, they're awesome things,

but yeah, you just can't relate to them.

As someone new to Dakar,

and I've never followed Dakar properly in any depth,

it's always been surface level.

I appreciate it all and the cars are fascinating,

but yeah, the prototypes are quite hard

to get your head around.

But yeah, seeing a defender doing a 5,000-mile rally

and winning it.

It is brilliant marketing.

I really like it.

The only similar thing I've done

was the Trans-Siberia rally,

so which was not at that level,

and a lot of it was transit stages.

So you started in Moscow

and ended in Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia,

but that had a similar lease sketchy.

Sounded like it was sketchy.

You don't know where you're really...

Again, you have waypoints

and some of the stages were like tulip diagrams,

so it was more like a rally stage.

But the thing I'm always impressed at with Dakar

is how they can judge just how fast to go

on punishing surfaces,

because I'd never done anything like that before.

So you're sort of feeling your way through

and trying to read the road and trying to feel the car.

And as soon as I thought, right, I'm going to go quick,

I hit a rock and put a hole through the sump.

Like, literally, how do people go so fast

and not completely wreck the car?

But I guess it's just...

They do. It's just serious, isn't it?

They do occasionally do that,

but I suppose you have the winners don't do it as much.

Because you can't just send it for 5,000 miles,

can you? It's going to catch you out at some point.

So the ones that can really push it just to the edge,

but not go over it, that's a real talent, isn't it?

But part of winning is being able to repair the car quickly

and efficiently and having all the parts to hand.

I suppose it's accepting the fact that they will

drag the car back with something snap to fit all.

And one of the stages is 48 hours long, isn't it?

It's like an endurance stage with a nice car.

Yeah, there is an endurance stage and it's brutal.

I think 500 kilometres rings a bell,

but it might be longer than that.

So yeah, you don't have much help for quite a distance.

And you can, I think if you stop the car

and you stop it for 10 minutes,

and if anything really bad has happened,

then you can call for help

and then you can get external assistance.

But otherwise, you're on your own.

The wheel changes and sort of everyday stuff,

it's just down to the co-driver and driver to sort, so yeah.

It's very cool, thank you.

It's so punishing, isn't it?

When you see the onboard stuff,

when they're on rough surfaces,

they're literally being impact to death

for 12 hours a day, aren't they?

Yeah, 10G impacts for the defender.

And that's not an ultimate top-class car, so pretty serious.

Impressive.

What a thing to do.

Yeah, well, at the end of this week,

we've got a new long-term, I just joined the Evo fleet.

We've got a GR Yaris.

Of course, because you're going to have to call, aren't you?

Yeah, it's to be a very different rally to head to.

We'll catch up on that next episode, how different it was.

But speaking of Toyota, you've been up close

and hands-on with this, the new GR GT,

which is one of the most talked about cars,

certainly on the internet, and the lead-up to it.

Definitely on the internet.

Appearance.

Yeah, that was a very interesting trip,

because no one really knew what the car was before the trip.

We'd seen the prototype at Goodwood and the GT3 car,

or what we thought was the GT3, on various racetracks.

But, yeah, to see it uncovered in Japan

was very interesting.

They are the absolute masters of that, aren't they?

Of teasing stuff and creating a very buzz.

They did it very well.

And the teasers were very minimal.

I think there was a Japanese TV advert

that was the only real teaser.

So that, the pictures of people's TV screens

were just posted on the internet, and that was the teaser.

The car is almost like a previous generation supercar,

or almost two generations of supercar a go.

So it's like an SLS, or it looks a bit like a Dodge Viper.

Yeah.

But the powertrain is almost like

a previous generation AMG GT.

So it's four-litre twin-turbo-charged V8.

It is mild hybrid, but it's very mild,

and you can't run in pure electric mode.

Fully rear-wheel drive.

I may say that there is no real way for them to make it,

or wheel drive, if they wanted to, in this configuration, so.

Well, it looks so low, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's no room for extra gubbins.

No room.

They say at least 641 brake horsepower.

That's healthy.

But it could be a lot more than that.

Yeah.

Over 200 miles an hour.

Yeah, it's a property.

It's a brand-new clean-sheet car, isn't it?

Or new engine, or new platform.

It's quite big, it's quite long, isn't it?

Longer than an SLS AMG.

Yeah, it's longer and wider than an SLS, lower, I believe.

It has massive presence.

Are they gonna race that?

They are gonna race it.

Yeah, so I think the real purpose of this car,

if it sells well in road car form,

and I'm sure they won't complain,

but the GT3 car has been launched alongside it.

So the GR GT3 is their new GT car,

and Accio seems very keen on that being a strong race car.

But I think it might come to the N24.

Yeah, I was gonna say, he'll, he'll,

quite soon, sooner than we think.

Yeah, because he races himself at the N24,

under his Maurizio kind of pseudonym.

Yeah, and his son is doing a lot of racing now.

Right, yeah.

So we'll probably see him, him in it at some point.

They were always running LFA's when years go,

and I was there, it was, they'd just be hundreds

of maculately dressed mechanics in red overalls

and baseball hats, and it would come in

and they'd check everything, presumably,

because Toyota was practicing it,

so not that they wouldn't care if anyone else was in it,

but they were absolutely belt and braces

with what they did, and they would always clean it as well.

And you think what?

But it always went out absolutely maculately.

They certainly go about things in a different way.

But that sounded good, a race spec LFA.

Yeah, it's amazing.

Yeah, they had some there at the reveal event,

and Accio was talking about that car.

Obviously, it's an awesome car,

as it's a massive unicorn of a race spec LFA,

but it didn't perform how they wanted it to perform.

And that's why he wants this car to perform well.

It's interesting how far back in time

did they sort of push the button on this,

how long has it taken to get here?

Because it is quite a retro-feeling thing,

and it's appeared at a time when retro is coming back,

if you excuse the contradiction.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, I'm not sure how long ago they started the project.

It's a back-to-basics, thumping, powerful rear drive.

And it feels like something that no one else can make now.

Everyone else is sort of suggesting that the industry says

you can't make this sort of thing anymore,

and now Toys is going to release a brand-new

ground-up supercar with a V8 and rear-wheel drive.

It's funny how Toyota's become kind of the savior brand

for car enthusiasts when 20-odd years ago,

there were hot hatches too with the Harrison Corolla.

And they're trying different techs as well.

They're not just retro, they're hydrogen-able.

They've got such a scale there, haven't they?

I guess they can...

Doing that car has a smaller impact on their group.

Yeah, they go too.

Yeah, you know, it's a bit in the ocean, isn't it?

When you're making millions and millions of hybrid

or electric or hydrogen.

I think ours, so that's their reward and our reward,

I suppose, isn't it?

They can do it and they do still love to do it.

I think it's a combination of that and their chairman

being Akeo Toyota.

Yeah, he comes from the top down.

Yeah, he's always right on it, so.

Yeah, he's an amazing guy.

It's quite something, isn't it?

When you see where their involvement in,

and they're dedicated to propping up

significant championships up there.

So they support WRC, they supported WEC,

when all the other teams pulled out.

They've spent a lot of money in Dakar.

They're clearly looking at GT3 racing and club,

less, you know, the sort of feeder series as well.

Yeah, they're unique, I think, aren't they,

in their commitment to that kind of thing.

And as you said, John, they're kind of agnostic

when it comes to technology, though.

Yeah, yeah, it's pure electric, looking at hybrid.

And they're a fuel cell, hydrogen fuel cells.

Yeah, so yeah.

And you've been out with Bosch in Germany.

Yes.

Those very technologies.

Yeah, it seems a long time ago, pre-Christmas, isn't it?

But yeah, there was an invite to drive something

which the name of it got changed before we went out there.

But it was an interesting name, track beast,

to start with, which is some very torturous, you know.

I think it was like Bosch engineered assist track thing.

Nice.

So it ended up being called track performance assist.

Okay.

Which is quite interesting.

That's memorable, but also, yeah.

Yeah, TPA.

Sounds like something from the Marvel series, isn't it?

So the idea is that you can,

the bottom line is you can put anybody

in something really, really powerful

and send them off around a circuit and they won't crash.

It's a combination of knowing what the track is

and knowing the capabilities of the car

and then letting the car decide

when you're on the right line or not,

whether you've braked at the right point.

So in theory, you could do a whole lap

with your foot flat to the throttle,

almost like in a computer game or something.

Take a bit of bravery at first.

It does, I can tell you.

It does.

I'll put my tinfoil hat on now and be a conspiracy theorist,

but it seems like a bit of a Trojan horse to me

because you can prove things on the track

in a safer environment, can't you?

But surely it's feeding into an autonomous car.

Technology wants more of the road to map than in theory.

You literally can't road and speed limit.

You can't crash, you can't.

Yeah.

So you are still in control,

but it's like you've got those 10-pin bowling sausages

down the garter to stop you from crashing.

Yeah, the rails.

And it did feel a bit weird.

It was, I think you've been to Boxburg,

which is Bosch's sort of backyard test track,

which is pretty fiddly.

Certainly is if you're in a DB 11, which I was,

and with the system fitted.

And you've got a massive screen,

so it tells you how close you are to the ideal line.

But of course, you're on the track,

you never get a chance to look at that.

Yeah.

So there's all this great data over here

that you are literally trying to find your way around a circuit.

And it knows where it is on the circuit.

It's got this model of the car,

and AI has come up with the ideal lap and line.

And they've had some,

I think they've done about 30 circuits,

they've mapped at the moment,

so they can put a car onto these 30 circuits.

And they've taken it around,

and they're tell tales of pro drivers

who know circuits like the back of the hand,

going out in the car,

telling them they could be two tenths quicker

if they just took this other line.

Okay.

And then getting all sniffing,

then going out and trying to find in two tenths.

Right, okay.

Yeah.

So there is that.

But for me, it was odd,

because it doesn't tell you if you're on the right line,

it just tells you if you're accelerating at the wrong point,

it will jump in and, as Dickie says,

like the rails on a bowling alley,

it will not let you get too far.

But presumably if it was fitted to a steer

by wire car, then it could steer itself as well.

So it could just drive itself around.

We'll come on to that step.

Oh, I thought later.

There you go.

Nice.

You sew them up.

Yeah, so it was a little bit frustrating,

but you can have,

because the car will just break.

At the point it knows it needs to break.

So you're coming down to a hairpin

from quite a big speed.

It knows when it wants to break.

It knows the capability of the car.

Doesn't matter what line you're on,

it will start braking.

So you get on the brake

and you're not quite sure

if it's you giving it all the brake

or the car just filling in the bit

that you haven't pushed,

you haven't pressed for.

And then it's it blend out with the brake

in a different way and things like that as well.

So yeah, you're a bit blind

to trying to find the right lines

and know if it's you.

But you can have what they call a co-pilot,

which is actually a backseat driver

because they use the stereo of the car

to give you messages.

Oh, God, it's getting worse.

So it goes and break.

So that is the point at which you should break.

And you can dial it up or down.

So you can have a little shout at you as well.

Like, break, break, what do you do?

Do you have a shout at you in German?

That would be brilliant.

Yeah, Nick, Nick, Nick.

I think for what they see as a use for it at the moment

is track experiences for manufacturers

because you can put anybody in anything,

send them out on the track and they can drive it.

It's not going to crash.

So they get the full experience

and they leave the road and fire it all

with the bumper first junction for that to be well.

So it was weird.

But yeah, and interesting at the same time.

But to learn the lines, which is what you want,

or I want from a circuit, the brake points are one thing,

but you want to know that you're on the line,

getting the best out of the car.

You have to go back and compare your lines

Did you get to sort of do it yourself as it were?

Find the line you would choose naturally

and then compare that with what the system thought

and was there much of a difference?

Well, you can, we only got one session in the car

and then you get to compare with the ideal

and then see how much slower you are,

where all the gaps are,

proper normal data analysis.

But that was the frustration.

I say on the screen that's massive screen to your right,

there is like arrows showing whether you're...

Wait, it's just a little head up display

with like a ghost car on Gran Turismo,

doesn't it be an arrow and then you just...

I'll be gone.

Yeah, which is exactly what I said.

And they've tried to use head up display

from, you know, that's in the cars,

but it doesn't, it's not at the right place for you to...

Can I run?

They just need to replace the windscreen with a huge screen.

Just a massive...

Simulate what's in front of you.

Yeah, you wouldn't even need to get in the car.

No, you could do it, they needed you.

You could just stay in the office, couldn't you?

So it was interesting, but slightly frustrating.

The other thing they had for us to try there

was a hydrogen powered car,

which was a sports car,

and it wasn't a fuel cell,

so you're not using the hydrogen

to create electric combustion.

It was a combustion engine, in fact,

it was the engine that we know quite well,

the Netuno VCS, the Maserati 600 horsepower,

and it was built into a car.

It's built with Ligier,

and I think it's the front end of a LMP car,

and they're like the back end.

So it looks a little bit like an old Venturi or something.

Yeah, quite wedgy and quite purposeful.

So you get in the car for a couple of laps

in the passenger seat, it fires up,

it takes a little while to fire up,

because you've got, when you stop it,

you've got to purge all the lines of hydrogen,

because it leaks, that's what hydrogen does,

because it finds the best way to get out of anywhere,

so you have to purge it,

so the engine has to literally run out of fuel.

Gobble it all up, and then...

The class to have here is not sort of

going out of the bonnet or something.

Well, that's how you can tell

it's the hydrogen version,

rather than anything else,

because it sounds just like the regular V6,

sounds really good.

No, ask you, does it sound any different?

Yes, it's, yeah.

It just takes a little while,

one bank stops, and then the other bank stops.

It just sounds like it's running a bit rough.

Yeah, it's kind of.

Yeah, so yeah, you get a couple of laps in the car,

the car's quite impressive,

but that's not why you're there for what you're there for.

Is it responsive?

It just feels like a normal, yeah, nice engine.

Let's say hydrogen's always five years away.

Yeah.

Because the thing,

I mean, you can, that's the other thing,

you can, when it's running,

you just go down and put your face to the exhaust,

because it's just water vapor.

It'll be a water vapor.

Yeah, so there's nothing good for your skin,

by your skin ratio.

It's taken a long time,

because I can remember,

I remember the exact year,

but it must be well over 10 years ago,

between 10 and 15 years ago,

Aston Martin had a rapid,

they ran a rapid race car at Nurburgring, then 24,

and that had, that ran on dual fuel.

So it had a hydrogen tank,

so they could do two laps under an oil shelf,

and then it would switch to gasoline.

And that was, went like an absolute rocket,

because it was a rapid,

and it didn't have wings,

so it was overtaking all the GT3 cars,

so it was like Chris Porritt in it.

But yeah, that was,

it seemed like quite refined,

almost ready to go technology,

but whether there's the appetite to do it,

or the infrastructural issues, or...

That's always the thing,

it's, yes, the car will run.

On hydrogen, just as it would run on petrol,

you can optimize it for hydrogen and get more power.

This was like 600 horsepower.

You can optimize it,

but it's how you get the fuel to the car.

This is always the thing,

and how much you can actually carry.

In the car, yeah.

Because unless it's properly compressed.

It takes up a lot of space, doesn't it,

unless it's under very high pressure.

Yeah, and minus 273 degrees.

Or it's in liquid form,

but I just work for the road, so.

Yeah, so this is always the thing.

I think BMW did a seven series.

They built a limited run,

but you could not leave the car in the garage

over the weekend and not use it.

Because the garage would be filled with hydrogen.

It won't suffocate you.

But this is the thing.

If you, I think,

if hydrogen does get a foothold,

it will be for fixed journeys.

So you fill a truck with hydrogen at one end of journey,

take it somewhere, it's.

Sort of depot, depot kind of thing.

And then you do the same thing back again.

The idea that you go to a petrol station

and fill up like we do currently with hydrogen

is years and years away, I think.

It's so complicated, isn't it?

Because I know there's a use case for EV,

there's a use case for hybrid.

But actually, there's so much inertia around

even making a small pivot towards those things

that it feels like it's always.

Yeah.

The path of least resistance is to,

or maybe should be to stick with gasoline

and put all the effort into making it more efficient.

Sustainable.

Yeah.

It just seems like such a mountain to climb

whether it's creating the infrastructure

for an EV charging network

or finding ways of using hydrogen

or the limitations of its use.

So maybe it does work brilliantly for trucks

and it clearly works better for trucks

than trying to haul 30 tons of load around

with a battery-powered truck

with 30 tons of batteries in it as well.

Or buses or something with a fixed route

where you can predict how it's going to use.

Yeah, regular question and all that kind of stuff,

which is generally in cities anyway,

which is where the emissions are more critical.

And I think that the other thing about it

is because it uses all current ice technology,

which has come to a, you know,

it's been refined over however many years

since we first had combustor engines.

To suddenly stop all of that

is giving a big opportunity to people

who are piling on the EV wagon

and making them cheaper and cheaper and cheaper.

And you can kill the whole motor industry in Europe

by pivoting completely to EV.

Yeah.

And I think that's being recognised now

in lots of different ways.

But yeah, and it drove just like you had expected too.

It's a very nice car.

That's very cool.

Alpine have tried,

they've looked at hydrogen quite a lot.

I don't know if they're scaling that back now.

I have heard that they might not be pushing it

quite as hard as they were.

A few things on the plate at the moment.

Yeah, but they were, was it the Alpen Glow?

Alpen Glow, yeah.

Yeah.

And they ran a concept at Le Mans and it was flying.

It wasn't sort of a rolling concept

with electric motor.

It was a combustion powered hydrogen race car, basically.

And I think there is scope for that in motorsport.

Yeah.

Because you could use,

you could run liquid hydrogen in race cars

because you could compress it down in a two hour stint

and then refuel it in a pit stop

and it wouldn't have time to off-gap.

Exactly, right, there we go, yeah.

But there is a class coming at Le Mans.

Right.

And the Toyota was hoarding that in the house.

Yeah, of course.

And for an LMP, H hydrogen class.

There's long been a plan for the Garage 56,

the experiment to learn true to have a hydrogen.

I think it should be.

Yeah, I think, as you say,

it's always just around the corner.

Yeah, five years away.

It's always five years away.

But really exciting.

A bit like, yeah, you're hoppy.

And the Capri, which we can talk about in a minute.

Yeah, let's talk about that a bit, shall we?

But from looking forward to the future,

you've been driving a car that is a new car

but it looks to the past.

And antidotes for all that modern nonce.

So yeah, again, just before Christmas or November time,

we had the opportunity to drive something quite unusual.

Actually, a completely new company,

completely new car called a Nichols Ben 1A,

which is sort of an homage to a McLaren M1A Can-Am car.

So the first true McLaren competition car.

So the recipe is very similar.

So it's a small, it's like a lease-sized

or slightly smaller with us, 700 horsepower.

A seven-litre LS Chevy engine

is made to a slightly modified,

but Audi R8 manual box.

So you can imagine the feel and open gate.

So it's appropriate for the car.

It's a really, the structure,

it's really interesting project actually,

because you think it'll be a regular tub

or a space frame or maybe carbon fiber or something,

but it's actually used as the same bonded extrusions

and aluminum technology that the original lease

was constructed from and it was done

by the brilliantly named Bob Mustard.

Who was...

Was it from Norfolk?

He was behind that technology

because that came from Land Rover originally

and they were looking for a proof of concept,

which is how the lease ended up being built in that way.

So it's a nice full circle.

The nickel's name comes from Steve Nichols

who designed the McLaren MP4-4,

so famously won 15 of its 16 Grand Prix that year.

And the kind of quiet hero behind it all

is a guy called John Minnet,

who's a fascinating bloke.

He kind of backed the project and it was his,

it was his sort of passion really to realize a back to basics,

but quite advanced sports car.

And his background is really interesting

and they know loads of interesting people

within the sort of motorsport valley.

And he looked at buying TVR from Nikolai Smoletsky

and then quickly, I think all the backing was there

and then quickly ran away from it

when they did a bit more due diligence.

So yes, it's a car with real credentials

and it looks amazing.

Yes, it really looks like a sort of can-am future.

Yes, a beautiful thing, very simple, old-school looking thing,

composite body.

Yeah, it's half a million pounds, which is...

How much is an original one of those?

That sort of...

I don't know, can-am cars are always,

I think they should be worth more than they are,

but I think they tend to frighten people off

and there aren't the opportunities to race there are,

but they're not an easy thing to find an excuse for really.

But it's a beautiful thing.

They're doing a limited run of the spec that I drove,

so icon 88, which references an 88 season for the MP4

and successes.

And then they'll roll the car out

with a choice of engine options.

So you don't have to have the full 700 horsepower Monty?

I mean, it's going to be pretty monstrous.

Quite spicy.

Is it 900 kilos or just under traction control?

There is, but it's a motorsport system.

So it was so exciting.

We drove it in South of France,

drove it on the road as well briefly,

but we just joined them.

They were doing more than a shakedown,

a sort of development run,

really, to work on some suspension settings

and they swapped it to some new brakes, carbon brakes,

so they were trying to get a feel for how they responded.

So it was really trusting of them to let us in the car

and drive it in that state.

But I was sort of expecting it to be quite raw.

It needs a lot more work to get it to work,

but they're very close to having it

in a really nice place, I think,

and as a car that you could,

clearly it's going to be part of a collection

of lots of other things,

but it's so exciting to get in it.

And in my head, a car that's the size of an Elise,

but has 700 horsepower sounds terrifying,

but was it actually quite driveable?

It's got a choice of engine maps.

Okay.

So there's a button with 11 on it.

So you turned up to 11 and that gives you a full 700 horsepower

and the map below that is around about half that.

So I know they're thinking of whether they have

more increments or whether the baseline

is a little bit more power.

So it's less of a step,

but it's actually quite mild-mannered

in the lower power mode.

I guess it's quite a nice, smooth delivery, it's quite.

Yeah, I mean, a huge amount of torque.

So it's an effortless thing to drive down the road

and then it's very, very angry

when it's got 700 horsepower.

But yeah, it's a beautiful thing.

It's on throttle bodies.

So you've got the trumpets and the mesh covers

and yeah, this curvy sort of perspex,

low perspex screen.

So you're kind of tucked in this car.

And I have actually driven an M1A

and it was very, very reminiscent of that

when you get in it and you're sat low

and the front, it's a very curvy 60s shape.

The way the front wheel arches come up,

you sort of feel like you're sat

almost lower than the tops of the body.

It's like nothing else really.

So yeah, I wish them well.

They're still doing some development,

sort of refinements on some suspension settings.

And then later this year with customers.

Yeah, there'll be some early customers

that have sort of supported the project

for a number of years will be the first

to get their cars company.

They were at Pebble Beach last year, I think.

And they took one or two orders there

because obviously there's a connection

to kind of sharing the states

and people would probably appreciate those cars

more than anywhere else.

So yeah, I think it would be a slow burn

in terms of how they get the car out there.

But I think, because you don't really know much,

you know some of the characters involved,

but you don't know anything about them as engineers

or what they've put together.

I wasn't quite sure how resolved the car was gonna be,

but it's a really-

It's as though it's real, substantive.

Beautifully finished.

They were using a company called

Atelier Special Vehicles,

which is down sort of Petersfield.

So I think they do a lot of paint work

and body work for Lanzanty.

And so they used to working

on some really special project stuff.

So they've helped them get the first cars built,

but there will be a production facility

where they'll build the cars.

Yeah, really interesting thing.

It's nice to know something that you have no-

Yeah, yeah, no preconceived ideas.

And then it surprises you by,

yeah, kind of being everything you hoped,

but then more in the areas where they maybe could

help some corners.

I'm hopeful that it'll be at one or two

of the Evo track days in the summer at Goodwoods.

Oh, you're fantastic.

Goodwoods are a good setting for it as well.

Yeah, so probably we'll have it there

and you can have a try of it.

Well, let's take that moment to have a little quick break,

maybe open the biscuits,

and then we'll be back in a minute.

Welcome back to the Evo podcast.

And in the second half,

we're going to chat about a very special Bugatti,

which I went out to see in Germany again,

just before Christmas.

So Bugatti have this new Solitaire program

where they make these one-of-one cars for special clients.

They've done one so far, the Brulliards,

which was this incredible kind of green hypercar

that they did last year.

This is the second one they've done.

They're only ever going to do two a year.

Some years they may do none,

some years they may do one, they'll do a maximum of two.

And this one's called the FKP Hommage.

So FKP stands for Ferdinand Carpiac,

because it's partly a tribute to him,

the late VW group kind of overlord and famous engineer.

And it's also a tribute to the original Veyron,

because it's 20 years since the Veyron came out.

And from a distance, it kind of looks a lot like a Veyron.

It really does.

Yeah.

We're going to pop a picture up, aren't we?

Yeah, yeah, we should show some things to people.

People at home might see what it looks like.

It's the same original color scheme.

That's right.

Yeah, the launch.

The red and black, they said that was the first customer car.

So they wanted it to kind of echo that as closely as they could.

And in a weird way, it's kind of a Veyron facelift

that never was, because Frank Hale,

the current design director at Begatti Remats,

when he joined back in 2008,

one of the first projects he worked on was a facelift

for the Veyron, which then never went into production.

So he reached in the draw.

Yeah, dug out the off sketches.

So yeah, so this car's kind of a mixture of some of the ideas

that were on the table back then when he did that.

And then some of the stuff that's become possible

since with modern technology, modern lights,

modern things like the panel gaps

and the creases in the bodywork.

Yeah, that's the baseline.

Precise, and the finish of the carbon fiber,

that the paint has this special tint,

so it sort of looks almost black in places in the shadows.

And then it's this really rich red.

It's a great time to do it, isn't it?

Because the Veyron looks better and better.

I think it was quite...

I think it sort of seems strangely underwhelming

when they first...

Well, it was never very super car looking.

No, it was very...

But it's really classy now.

Yeah, yeah.

Really classy looking thing.

It's almost got...

Because Frank, the design director,

was explaining when the Veyron came out,

most super cars have got...

You can almost draw a diagonal line

from sort of the top to the bottom of them.

They're all kind of charging forward.

They're just kind of wedgy, so to speak.

And the Veyron, it's almost like it's leaning back a little bit

because it's got that curvy...

Yeah, the big four-shoot grill.

Yeah, yeah.

So we wanted to keep that stands for this car.

But yeah, the original,

it's got that slightly kind of downturned eyes.

It almost is a little bit sad almost.

So this one, it's got DRLs,

which obviously weren't around then,

the daytime running like LED graphics.

They give it a bit more of a horizontal,

kind of defiant expression.

A bit more like a Chiron.

Yeah, which, funny enough,

is exactly what it is underneath.

So it's a Chiron...

Oh, sad day to Chiron.

Yeah.

The Chiron is essentially

the same mechanical package anyway.

It is pretty much.

Yeah, he said the hard points on the Chiron platform

aren't very, very similar to that of the Veyron

because it evolved from the Veyron anyway.

So the engines from the Chiron Super Sports,

which also was in the Nistral,

which he drove a few months back.

Yeah, in the rain.

Yeah, you had perfect conditions.

40 riders an hour.

Yeah, with the roof up.

We'd come back to that as well, wouldn't we?

In another podcast.

Bit of a theme.

So yeah, 1600 PS,

which is about 600 horsepower more

than the original Veyron had.

So they've had to find a ways to get more air in.

Yeah.

It's Chiron.

Dynamically, it'll be the car we kind of hoped

the Veyron would have been

because Veyron was quite inert, wasn't it?

And very kind of contained and restrained

or sort of mirror the way it looks.

And Chiron was a bit more...

Yeah, this has got...

Had a bit more feel and agility and energy about it.

So...

Yeah, this has got the same four-wheel drive system

from the Chiron and obviously modern drivetrain tech,

modern tires, it's on Michelin Cup 2 tires.

They wouldn't disclose a top speed,

but we can assume it's quite fast

because it still has a speed key to unlock the top speed,

which on the Veyron was famously 400 kilometers an hour.

So we can assume it does at least that.

Well, with that horsepower.

Yeah.

It should be manageable.

And it has active aero,

which the original Veyron didn't.

So...

Well, it did.

They're the best.

Yeah, so yeah.

Oh, nowhere else.

Not to the same degree, yeah.

And it's balanced at the front this time.

So yeah, it's...

So are you saving up for it?

Well, the other thing they wouldn't disclose is the price

because that's a matter between Bugatti and the clients

and actually...

So do they...

Did they say whether they...

It's like a sort of field of dreams thing.

They build it and then they find a client.

Or does the client come to them with an idea of their deals?

Because I saw the brewery at the factory the last time I was...

Yeah.

And it's pretty special,

but it's a very individual thing.

The little horse logos here and then...

Yeah.

Because the PIEC thing feels more like something they've done

and then someone has come and said,

oh, that's that one.

Yeah, it's a bit of both.

So they were explaining that this scheme is kind of over-subscribed.

They have more applicants for it than they have spaces to make cars.

Of course they do.

It's...

Yeah, there's a lot of billionaires in there.

Yeah, they need to charge all.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I think in this case it was two ideas that neatly aligned together.

I don't know how much conversation there was,

but I think the client had the idea of the Veyron and the PIEC homage,

but also it tied in very neatly with 20 years since the Veyron was released.

So it kind of worked well for both parties.

And I think there's a bit of back and forth between the company and the client

as to what's right for the brand as well as the client.

That's appropriate for Bugatti's history as well,

because a lot of their cars, they would provide the chassis

and then the other would have them coach Bill.

And as you said, going back to the Tori and Jean Bugatti, that's what they did.

They had existing chassis and running gear and then they do a bespoke body to go on the top.

It's interesting because Ferrari has done one-offs in the past

and speaking to people at Marinello, they're amazing projects,

but they take a lot of manpower and a lot of resource.

And it's the same with this car.

There's about 50 designers at Bugatti and all of them worked on this project.

So it does take everyone.

I think a few, they're all quietly working on these things,

aren't they? The problem is, Boat Tail is famously...

Yeah, yeah.

You know, absolutely extraordinary amounts of money, aren't they?

Which just can't get my head around them.

And clearly they can pay for as many design studio hours as they need.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's potentially an investment as well, if this thing, you know,

it's going into a collection presumably and, you know, down the line,

if it builds up some notoriety, it's...

I think they surf this, don't they?

They tend to go into re-election and then 10 years later,

they'll find another owner and then they disappear and go for a radar again, don't they?

Which is part of the mystique of these things, I guess.

Yeah, and it's kind of worth what you're prepared to pay for it.

I think in that league it is, isn't it?

You only need two billionaires that want the same car and it just goes nuts, so...

I'm wondering if Aeron first came out, personalisation wasn't really a thing.

There were something like 18 colours and that was kind of it.

And then over its life...

Now does.

Yeah, they're all unique, aren't they?

Yeah, but by the end of its run they said they needed two production slots per car

by the end because the personalisation requests were getting so extreme,

it would take twice as long to make the car.

So this is almost the ultimate extrapolation of that.

And is that car assembled in most home where they assemble the other cars?

So the car that we photographed was actually a model, a very, very detailed,

Ford's Girl model, so the real thing is still being built, it'll be finished shortly.

But yeah, back in the real world we've been doing a lot of driving in the rain, all of us.

And Sam, you and I were driving two special German cars.

Yeah, yeah, that was a good test.

So the cover story of the issue that's, I think, depending on timing,

is just about still on sale when this goes out as we went back in time to drive

the BMW N5 CS from a couple of years ago and the Audi RS6 GT.

Those are both kind of, they kind of feel cut from the same cloth,

they're kind of both limited run, the Audi limited to a certain number of cars,

but then the BMW was kind of limited by time, it was only in production for a short time.

And both kind of special, give the engineers everything.

Well, they're both unexpectedly good, weren't they?

Because it came from cars which we kind of respected but didn't lust after.

Yeah, well the BMW hadn't quite got there at all, had it?

No, no.

It was quite frustrating actually, because they kept producing different models.

And then this one appeared.

It seemed to get further and further away from what an N5 should be, didn't it?

And then I distinctly remember thinking, bloody ridiculous thing,

four bucket seats in an N5, that's going to end, fix rate damper,

it's going to be terrible and then you drive it and it's amazing.

Yeah, I remember driving it, it was car of the year and we were in Scotland,

just down from Glenshee, I think.

And there's a bit of road that goes down the hill and it was really technical, really difficult.

And I drove it over that bit and I thought, okay, well that's the winner then.

It was just absolutely spot on.

You still feel that good?

Yeah, I'm happy to report, I still feel it was really special.

Yeah, within the first sort of roundabout actually at the end of the road here.

It's amazing.

As of Evo Towers.

It already, because yeah, I was working at another magazine when it came out,

but drove it, it would have been around the same time you guys did.

And I remember, yeah, exactly the same thing as I came at it with no real expectation.

It's such a weird thing to do, to me, but then it's so right.

When you're in a strange driving form and you have that set of car, but it does just work.

It feels so sophisticated.

The RS6 though.

Yeah, also, yeah.

I hadn't driven the RS6 GT and I know everyone here says it's a great car, but

blindly, it is really special.

So I don't really like the standard RS6, it would be an amazing daily driver if you could afford the

fuel bill.

But as a driver's car, I'm not to the standard RS6.

Yeah, it feels like a big, heavy car.

It's trying quite hard, isn't it?

It is.

It will make a heavy weather of stuff.

It should just, it feels heavy.

Yeah, the ride and the wheels are starting to beat.

Yeah, but it does ride remarkably well with standard cars.

Yeah, yeah, it does.

It does.

Considering the size of the wheels.

But the GT is like another step on this now.

It's just like another level on.

This is the full decal kit.

Yeah.

Waltz and Wells.

This was the first two wardrobe from 1980, isn't it?

Yeah, it's embarrassing enough on an S one.

Yeah.

But in years to come, it will be the car though, won't it?

At the sort of Bista Scramble 2050.

Got the white one.

What, like the Tommy Mac and the Neva instead?

Yeah, that's got those vibes, isn't it?

Yeah, that's 80 year old first owners there thinking he's been ridiculed for

Yeah, all these years.

All these years.

My time has come.

We'll get it.

Yeah, because we drove to Wales for the shoot from here in Bedfordshire

and it turned so many heads on the road.

And on the rain.

Yeah, we found some rain.

Yeah, well, we also discovered the BMW's tyres were four years old,

which is why it had no grip at all.

Yeah, the tyres were slight.

We all didn't help.

Yeah.

The RS6 in, we stopped at a service station

and it was the RS6 parked amongst a load of vans, transits.

And the way the decals, the sort of lower bottom half of the front grille is all black

and it makes it really exaggerates the width of the RS6

and it just looked bloody awesome.

Yeah, it looked like it should be there.

It looked like it had escaped and you might have chased down.

Yeah, in some contexts.

A bit embarrassing, but looks great.

It's funny because you were driving behind me on the motorway

and I could see other drivers' reactions to it in the mirror.

I could see other drivers' heads swiveling and doing double takes.

They seem to be waving at you a lot.

Yeah, it might have been so bad as well.

I got that as well, hopefully enough in the pincers.

So would the M5 CS be any better if they'd done a touring?

I know they didn't do a touring in that generation,

but everyone is obsessed with M5 Tourings, aren't they?

But then seemingly whenever they put them for sale, no one buys them.

So it's like a motoring journalist fetish.

It's the same with XF.

XF, oh, you get a state version of that.

But nobody wants it either.

And it's like the manual F-type.

And yet the Audi, I get why people like the long roof M5s,

but an M5 in my head is always a saloon.

But RS6 and big RFavi is always an estate.

And there is something still just right about the CS.

I mean, the gold grille at the time looked a bit gauche now in 2020.

Six, it doesn't look that crazy anymore.

And it looks the stands and the way the arch is just sort of listed.

It's quite underrated though.

Yeah.

It does have the gold bits, but it is quite, I mean, next to the RS6.

Well, compared to a new M5.

Or a new M5.

It's satin, isn't it?

Or frost or whatever.

Yeah, I'm not paid keen on that to finish.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it was only available in two colors,

and they were both that frosty finish.

And I'm sure they're worth a fortune now, aren't they?

I was having a look.

I think they're worth, yeah, you're looking at,

what was it now trying to remember?

Because obviously, I immediately went on to the internet

to try and see how much they cost for my imaginary lottery garage.

And yeah, they're worth, it's more than a hundred grand.

They're worth, I think about 120 from memory.

They're not over list.

Yeah.

Price though.

Which you'd kind of think they would be.

But how many did they make?

It was, I think it was only made for less than two years.

So, and I don't know how many came to the UK.

And the Audi also is worth more or less what it costs.

New, I think.

It sort of just hasn't depreciated.

And kind of the same with the M5 CS,

I think it's worth roughly what it costs.

And it first came out.

You'd still have one, wouldn't you?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, my lottery garage has got an M5 CS.

Yeah, I mean, that back compared to the,

I know we give the current M5 a bit of a kicking, don't we?

But they're absolute worlds apart, aren't they?

Absolute worlds apart now, those cars.

There was the one thing that felt driving both cars

sort of found myself hoping they're not,

sort of, that's the high point for now,

and it will be a while before they get there again.

It's kind of as good as they're going to get, isn't it, sadly?

Because they're stuck in this sort of enormous step up in weight

and torque and complexity, aren't they?

Whereas those cars are stripped back versions of previous gen cars

that were already a lot more simple anyway.

So they're just refreshing things to drive, aren't they?

I know we sound like broken records with all this,

but there is something nice about getting in a car

and accepting it for what it is, don't you?

You're more prepared to accept compromises

when you know it does certain things effortlessly, brilliantly,

and you're not forever fiddling and faddling around.

Yeah, although they both had lots of driving modes,

they still felt very analog and very kind of true,

and both still very good at just being normal cars as well.

Great for the drive to Wales.

Well, from great cars of the recent past,

back to great cars of now, next time, next episode,

we're going to be talking about the Ferrari 849 Tasterosso,

Yes, Sam and I and Aston were out on that, which was right.

Typically for our launch, but...

You survived it.

Yeah, and typically fascinating car.

So it'd be great to hear about that in depth,

and we've got loads more to discuss too,

but yeah, in the meantime, thank you, John.

Thank you, Sam.

Thanks, Sam, thanks everyone.

Yeah, thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.

The Bugatti Veyron is back, Toyota GR GT & will hydrogen happen? | Episode 37

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