This is going to be a most pleasant day. I have been tasked with the challenge of driving from the Brooklands motor museum in Weybridge to Brighton without using a motorway and preferably not using a dual carriageway. “Is it still possible,” asked the editor, “to enjoy driving on Britain’s congested roads?” It most certainly is. A couple of weeks ago, I joined some friends on a navigational rally around the Surrey hills followed by a pleasant lunch. It helped that I was driving an Alpine A110, but it would have been a wonderful day out in a Morris Minor. It’s going to help a great deal that today we are driving a brand new Corvette Grand Sport. The car has been loaned by Ian Allan Motors of Virginia Water who, as you have probably seen from their advertisements in the print version of Autocar, are the sole UK supplier of Corvettes and Camaros. More to the point, the Corvette is about to be replaced by a new mid-engined C8 model and only a handful of EU type-approved cars are left. Allan has taken the immensely bold step of buying up 60 Corvettes and Camaros so that UK enthusiasts won’t go short. Including, on a temporary basis at least, this one. So let’s get cracking. Lovely weather but a few showers forecasted. Kevin Hurl at Ian Allan Motors had a red Grand Sport coupé lined up for us but someone bought it last week so he’s registered another Grand Sport from his secret stash. It’s red, it’s automatic and it’s a convertible. And he doesn’t want it back for several days. Goodwin is in his element. Not only did I grow up in Surrey but I was a motorbike courier based in Guildford for a year, so the Brooklands to Brighton route is right in my manor. I’m certainly not going to mess about with the car’s sat-nav and I probably won’t bother with the paper map that I’ve brought along. Our managing editor, Damien Smith, told me about a trip he’d done from Surrey to Williams’ headquarters near Wantage that inspired this feature. “I only,” he boasted proudly, “used a very short bit of dual carriageway.” I shall do better than that. I’m determined to not use an inch. By the time we’ve collected the Corvette and got to Brooklands, we are in the middle of what I call ‘the 10 o’clock sweet spot’. Van drivers are still loading up and mummies have dropped the kids off at school and have now put the X5 away and decamped to the coffee shop. And if you think I’m being sexist, come to Weybridge. The Corvette Grand Sport is wide, but the standard Stingray is actually two inches narrower than a Jaguar F-Type. Unlike the C6 model that we ran for one long-term test many years ago, it has straight edges on the top of its front wings so that it’s not too difficult to place on the road. Just as well because my route has taken us directly to some very narrow roads. We’ve crossed the A3 at Cobham and have run virtually parallel to it through the village of Ockham and then past the old Tyrrell Formula 1 factory. It’s now the home of an Italian cake decorations company. The buildings are as they were and even the old woodshed where Ken started it all is kept in perfect condition. Hard to imagine that a world championship-winning team was run from this small yard. Past another local motoring landmark, Bell Colvill, the Lotus dealers in East Horsley. Bobby Bell and Martin Colvill often used to have one of their classics in the showroom – a GT40 or BRM P160, perhaps – so this is another one of my regular haunts. I also went for a job in their service department in the 1980s but fortunately didn’t get it. We’re now on the route of the Olympic cycling road race and it’s surprising that we’re not surrounded by retired men in Lycra. You get a view right across to London from the high ground up here, including the Shard. The entry-level Corvette is the Stingray, and like this Grand Sport it’s powered by a naturally aspirated version of the classic Chevrolet small-block pushrod V8 that produces 466bhp. The most powerful ’Vette is the Z06, which uses a 659bhp supercharged version of the same engine. More money, more weight and a few tenths knocked off the 0-60mph time, with a top speed of 193mph against our car’s 180mph. All meaningless figures. What matters is the emotional appeal of cars like this and the sense of occasion. We’re now in the chocolate-box village of Shere, busy as usual with ramblers. A pub called The William Bray has the builders in and here we have another connection with Tyrrell: the landlord used to be ex-Tyrrell driver Julian Bailey. I once saw a band play here that had Eddie Jordan on the drums. We’re on single-track lanes here, cut into the Surrey hills with steep banks and passing places. In a big car like the Corvette, you simply have to think ahead and be relaxed, happy to give way. I had a massive moment on these roads in a Beetle when I was a teenager. The brakes went and I had to use the handbrake and bounce the car off the earth embankments to try to slow it down. Past
Origin: Chevrolet Corvette: iconic sports car meets Britain’s country lanes
Britain’s
A day in the life of Britain’s exotic car transporters
Lewis Grimshaw has learned the hard way that whoever takes a car off one of his firm’s transporters should be the person who loaded it, too. “It was a Subaru Impreza rally car and as I loosened the last wheel strap, it started to roll back,” he says. “Instinctively, I grabbed the wheel but as I did so, two of my fingers slipped between the brake caliper and a spoke. As the wheel turned, they were almost sheared off from the tip of the finger to the first joint. There was a lot of blood.” Having not loaded the car Lewis didn’t know that with the engine switched off, the Subaru’s hydraulic handbrake wouldn’t function. Meanwhile, the mechanic who had overseen the Impreza’s loading had insisted it shouldn’t be left in gear, to avoid, he explained, the teeth being worn as the car rocked backwards and forwards in transit. On arrival and freed of its bindings, the car simply rolled backwards. Today, seven years since that fateful delivery, you’d barely know Lewis’s fingers had been mangled. But what light scarring remains is a reminder that the multi-million-pound cars his family’s business transport under cover aren’t the only precious things they must consider… I meet Lewis at seven o’clock sharp one weekday morning in the family’s truck compound at Brackley, a few miles from Silverstone. His father Paul, who founded Paul Grimshaw Vehicle Movements 12 years ago, is here, too, as is Steve, the company’s longest-serving driver. Paul and Steve are busy polishing one of the company’s Volvo trucks that today is towing a Rolfo Auriga Deluxe six-car, covered semi-trailer. Inside it are a customer’s McLaren Senna and 675LT, and his Porsche 911 GT2, all three collected yesterday from storage in the New Forest. In a few minutes, Steve and I will climb aboard the Volvo to take them to Silverstone for a trackday organised by Club GT Events, a company for those with the cars, the time and the cash to sample Europe’s best race tracks and driving roads. “I love trucks,” beams Paul, the Volvo now gleaming to his satisfaction. “I’m picking up the latest addition to the fleet next week: a new-generation Scania S650 V8. I can’t wait.” Lewis may have come close to losing a couple of fingers, but twice Paul has come close to losing his life. He’s had two major strokes as a result of the stress associated with establishing a successful car transport business in just 12 years. “It’s been exhausting,” he says. “Trucks like this Volvo cost £320,000 each and they have to earn their keep. Right now, we’ve got two trucks in Sweden, two in Ukraine, one coming back from Geneva and another bringing two Mercedes Formula 1 cars from Germany.” The week before our visit, the company took nine Mercedes F1 cars to Silverstone for the launch of the team’s new season. Recently, it took cars for Porsche to the Arctic and Audis to Kiev for a TV commercial. Its trucks regularly travel to Maranello to collect new Ferraris for UK dealers. In between, it rounds up cars for auctions and exhibitions, and, as it does for companies such as GT Club Events, delivers cars for individual clients to most of Europe’s supercar playgrounds. On one recent job a PGVM truck was carrying a Ferrari F50 GT and an F12 TRS – a one-off – and a Porsche 911 RSR. In circumstances like these, where the cars are not only valuable but irreplaceable, customers may insist on spreading the risk. “Not long ago, we had to transport four F1 cars for Mercedes from testing in Europe,” says Paul. “We used two trucks but Mercedes wanted them to go on separate Channel crossings in the event that a ferry went down.” Remarkably, Paul doesn’t know off the top of his head how many trucks PGVM has since their ranks are swelled by those he sub-leases to other operators. But on the subject of his own dedicated transporter fleet, he’s clear enough. “There are three Rolfo covered trailers with extending roofs and three with extending backs for longer cars. Then there’s a four-car truck for large vehicles, and a two-car truck. “We’ve also got two race trailers with tail lifts, like the Rolfo De Luxe we’re using today, where the car is too long to drive up a ramp without grounding it. Aston Martin uses one of them to take two Vulcans on the top deck and all their race kit below.” After the short drive to Silverstone, we watch as Dan, Lewis’s 20-year-old brother, relieves the Rolfo of its precious cargo. I ask Lewis the secret to unloading a supercar without damaging it. “The key is to take the trouble to find out if the car has features such as power mirrors you can fold easily and chassis lifting systems. On a Ferrari, the lift switch looks like a damper mode button and on a McLaren it’s a stalk on the steering column. “And you must practise operating the clutch. A Testarossa’s is extremely heavy while the carbon clutch on, say, a 360 Challenge Stradale is impossible to use until it’s warmed through. I remember loading a Stradale that
Origin: A day in the life of Britain’s exotic car transporters
Watching paint dry with Britain’s road markers
White lines, yellow lines, rumble strips… We take them for granted but the material they’re made from is designed to operate in some of the most challenging conditions imaginable. They’re replicated in laboratories like the one tucked at the back of Hitex International, a leading manufacturer and applier of road markings based in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire. Here, Steve, one of the company’s most experienced chemists, mixes, heats, weighs and generally tests road marking formulations to destruction like some bearded wizard of the white lines. In one corner of the lab is a portable skid resistance machine. It has an arm fitted with a calibrated rubber slider designed to pass over a sample of road marking. As it does so, it brushes it, generating a skid resistance value or SRV. A white centre line should have an SRV of 45+. Close by it is a retroreflectometer for testing the night and daytime reflectivity of road marking samples. Beads derived from recycled glass provide the reflectivity. Elsewhere in the lab, Steve (he won’t reveal his surname – “Confidential,” he says, only half jokingly) tests the colour fastness of road markings. He tells how Hitex saved the day on the M3 when Highways England noticed the orange-painted emergency refuge areas on the smart motorway were bleaching. “We developed a more UV-stable pigment in the lab for them,” he says, proudly. I don’t bother asking for the recipe. Confidential, probably… Easily the simplest but most ingenious piece of equipment in his lab, though, is the softening point tester. A glass beaker is filled with a calibrated heat-transfer liquid in which a circular disc of solid road marking material is suspended. A steel ball is then placed on the surface of the disc. The temperature at which the ball sinks through the material is the material’s softening point. It’s an important number to know, especially for road marking applications in extreme heat; for example, in Bahrain, where the road surface can easily reach 90deg C. This man with no surname is a vital cog in an industry worth £270 million a year in the UK alone. However, his efforts and those of others like him in the labs of the other eight or so major producers of marking material will, in 2020, be augmented by tests of road markings and studs on real roads, following an agreement between Highways England and the Road Safety Markings Association (RSMA) that represents the road marking industry. They’ll be the first such tests in 10 years. Engineers will be testing skid resistance, wet and dry reflectivity, and erosion caused by so-called ‘wheelovers’, or the action of millions of car tyres on the road markings. Stu McInroy, head of the RSMA, claims the tests will help reduce accidents and their associated costs. “A study by the Road Safety Foundation in 2018 showed that every £1 of road safety engineering, including applying accurate road markings, returns £4.40 in societal benefit.” Bosses of trade associations are fond of quoting such figures, of course. McInroy’s are challenged by another study by Transport for London which suggested white lines give drivers a misplaced sense of confidence and that removing them could create “an element of uncertainty, reflected in lower speeds”. Its theory has since found a home in Exhibition Road, London; a so-called ‘shared space’ free of white lines, where pedestrians enjoy priority over cars. “A shared space is fine for controlled, inner-city environments but not a busy A-road,” says McInroy. “Take away the white lines at a slip road and you’d soon know about it!” I’ve come to Hitex International primarily to push a pram. That’s what road markers call the little trolley that ‘draws’ the white line on the road. There’s a big problem, though: it’s raining. “Anyone who can come up with a road marking you can lay in the wet will clean up,” says Dominic Haynes, group marketing manager of Hitex International. He gazes out of his rain-lashed office window at the company’s fleet of road marking trucks parked up, going nowhere. They’re made by Somerford Equipment, owned by Hitex. The biggest is the Multimark, in the firm’s words “the ultimate truck-mounted solution for the application of spray, extrusion and profiled thermoplastic road markings”. In addition, there are anti-skid/ high-friction surfacing vehicles, demountable road marking units, extrusion/profiled trucks for applying a wide range of markings of different densities and solo marking vehicles combining all operations in one vehicle. Easily the most interesting, though, is the road stud installation truck, which does exactly what it says. On board is a hydraulically operated stud-drilling head and a powerful suction system for removing road debris. Hitex manufactures the road marking material it lays: a choice of the more traditional thermoplastic markings and cold-cure, durable thermoset markings made of methyl methacrylate, a compound that’s
Origin: Watching paint dry with Britain’s road markers
Under wraps: Britain’s most secretive engineering firm
f you only read headlines, you could believe UK Automotive Manufacturing Plc’s entire business (still healthy despite the predictions of doom) was conducted entirely by car makers and giant parts suppliers whose names are carried three metres high on factory walls. That’s not quite true. Below the radar sits an extensive network of discreet technical consultancies the majors commonly use to solve their thorniest problems. They survive and thrive by maintaining a limpet-grip on leading-edge technology and delivering results with a need-for-speed usually honed in motorsport. A prime example is Northants-based RML Group, an engineering and technology company with racing roots back to the 1950s and which expanded into top-level race car design and engineering in the 1980s. It has since further expanded its activities to become a leading authority in lightweighting, prototype construction and electrification, mostly for time-poor automotive giants but also for defence and aerospace clients. Sitting atop this compact empire in Wellingborough, Northants, is CEO Michael Mallock, grandson of Arthur Mallock, an architect of Britain’s post-war motorsport engineering heritage that spawned influential companies such as Colin Chapman’s Lotus and Eric Broadley’s Lola. But while Chapman Co embraced commerce, Arthur Mallock kept making simple, affordable cars go amazingly fast. His Ford and Austin-based specials regularly beat far more expensive and complex designs; his finest hour was probably the creation of the U2 family of clubman race cars that applied basic physical principles so brilliantly that they remain highly successful in modern and classic racing even today. It fell to Arthur’s sons, Richard and Ray, to develop businesses off Arthur’s inspiration. Richard’s stayed with Mallock’s racing cars and Ray’s expanded into RML Group – embracing big-time racing and engineering. It built and campaigned BTCC cars and Le Mans racers (Ray’s special love) before expanding to become a self-styled ‘high-performance engineering company’. This transition corresponded closely with Michael Mallock’s elevation to CEO, following Ray’s staged retirement. “When I left school I came to RML on a formal apprenticeship,” he says, “working in all the departments: stores, electrics, design. As well as driving the van.” RML was doing well with Ray at the top of his game, so there was time for Michael to chase the professional racing dream for a while, starting in single-seaters and moving to sports cars with some impressive results. He returned to RML full time after 2011, first taking a commercial role. He is disarmingly modest about his achievements compared with those of his father: “Ray’s very much an engineer, and a fantastic driver,” he says. “I’m not a bad driver, but not an engineer at all.” This change of emphasis at the top has helped RML adapt itself to the modern market, says Michael. “When I came back, I studied the fortunes of our traditional competitors, people like Triple Eight, MSD, TWR and Prodrive. Some have gone now and the rest have changed. I pushed for us to start moving away from pure motorsport while keeping the race mentality and the cutting-edge technology. Today only about 10% of our business is directly connected to motorsport. We’re still in high-performance engineering, but the work isn’t mainstream. We don’t do Ford Fiesta door seals…” Michael Mallock’s first big project was to manage development and production of the Nissan Juke R, an ultra-high-performance version of the quirky compact SUV. Although production numbers were small, it brought much attention to RML and its changing capabilities, and it is remembered fondly. The biggest recent change, says Mallock, has been the rise of electrification. In just a few years, through clever hirings and rapid acquisition of know-how, RML has become a leader in low-volume electrification, to the extent that it now has a newly established HV (for ‘high voltage’) Centre about 10 minutes’ drive from the company’s traditional base. Most early electric programmes can’t be discussed, but one that attracted huge publicity was Nissan’s ZEOD RC Le Mans car, an experimental petro-electric sports racer built for the famous 24-hour race’s ‘Garage 56’, traditionally reserved for a car that imaginatively employs new tech and doesn’t conform to an established class. With initials standing for ‘Zero Emissions On Demand’, the ZEOD RC used chassis technology developed from the rule-breaking but conventionally powered Nissan DeltaWing and was built to deliver the first-ever all-electric racing lap at la Sarthe. Powered by a tiny, lightweight 1.5-litre, 400bhp three-cylinder petrol engine plus two 110kW electric motors, the ZEOD RC did indeed complete its electric lap, achieving a top speed close to 190mph on the Mulsanne Straight – although it failed to finish the race. Any tour of RML faces participants with a conundrum: most of what
Origin: Under wraps: Britain’s most secretive engineering firm
How Lando Norris became Britain’s youngest-ever F1 star
Lando Norris isn’t like most teenagers. Ask him a question and you’ll receive a thought-out, considered answer, delivered with an eloquence that belies his age – until you get the 19-year-old onto the right topic, that is. Ask him to recall the first time he drove a Formula 1 car and his eyes light up with glee. “It’s mind-blowing,” he says. “You see it on TV, but it always looks so easy. People just do not realise how hard it is, how quickly things come at you. You just don’t feel like you’ll stop accelerating, you’re going ‘woooah, this doesn’t stop’. Then suddenly you have this massive brake, and the car stops suddenly. Your mind has to take a second to keep up with what’s just happened, then you turn, accelerate and it all happens again. It’s quite insane.” Norris, of course, isn’t like most teenagers. Most teenagers can only dream of driving an F1 car. Norris gets to race one – for the storied McLaren team. When he started the Australian Grand Prix, Norris became the fourth-youngest driver to take part in an F1 race and the youngest-ever Brit, breaking the record set by the then-20-year-old Jenson Button in 2000. Not that Somerset-born Norris is bothered by that bit of British F1 history. “It’s not something I’ve tended to think about, it’s just something that comes with it,” he says, with a nonchalant shrug that suggests racing in F1 at the age of 19 is barely noteworthy. “It’s an achievement, and I’ve got to be proud of it. But my aim is not to be the youngest British F1 driver: it’s to win races and championships.” Still, Norris admits his rapid rise is a touch surreal. “It’s not long ago I was getting up at stupid o’clock to watch the Australian Grand Prix, thinking ‘one day I want to do that’,” he says. “Then you think how far away it is – and suddenly, I’m here. At the same time, I think of it gradually. I’ve taken my time to go through karting and the junior categories.” ‘Gradually’ is a relative concept here. Norris started karting in 2008, with his career culminating when he won the world championship in 2014. That year he also made his car-racing debut in the Ginetta Junior series. Norris switched to single-seaters in 2015, racing in MSA Formula (now Formula 4). He won the title. The following year he raced in two pan-European Formula Renault 2.0 championships and the New Zealand-based Toyota Racing Series. He won all three titles. In 2017 Norris stepped up to the Formula 3 European Championship. He won that title too. Last season, Norris jumped into Formula 2. He won his first race but finished second to fellow grand prix rookie George Russell in the final standings. That one still rankles a bit. “It didn’t quite go as well as I wanted it to,” says Norris, with a pained look that suggests he’d spent the year toiling deep in the pack rather than finishing as runner-up in F1’s top feeder category against a field of grand prix aspirants. “I’m annoyed, because I’d loved to have won it, and have it on my record. But I’ve got to realise I made mistakes that cost a win, or a podium, or a bunch of points. But I know the areas I made mistakes in, and I’ve got to make sure they don’t happen again. I still enjoyed it, and that’s the main thing.” The fact Norris found himself so high up the single-seater ladder before encountering some adversity – a relative term, in this instance – is incredible. Norris insists there’s no secret. “I’ve always been able to have good people around me who have put me in the right direction and with the right team,” he says. “I’ve been fortunate to do quite a bit of testing as well: even if I haven’t been able to test in the car we wanted to race in the next year, I’ve been able to drive something similar.” It’s worth acknowledging that Norris’s ability to race with some of the best teams – including junior single-seater powerhouses Carlin and Josef Kaufmann Racing – and conduct plentiful testing is aided by family wealth. But while you can find many well-funded drivers plying their trade on F1’s nursery slopes, you won’t find many with Norris’s stellar track record. These days, most junior categories have restrictive regulations that help ensure a level playing field. You don’t win as much as Norris has without incredible natural talent. It was that natural talent that brought Norris to the attention of McLaren, who signed him as a junior driver in February 2017. That deal, he says, was the first time he really began to believe he could reach F1. “I never knew,” he says. “Even in F2, I never went ‘I’ve got this, 100%, I can do this’. You always have a bit of doubt. But the biggest thing was joining McLaren, and my first test in Hungary.” Which brings us back to where we started, in August 2017, when a then-17-year-old Norris had his first McLaren outing at the Hungaroring. Norris says the step from F2 to F1 was “massive, the biggest between any category by far”. It’s one he handled well, though: he ended up second-quickest
Origin: How Lando Norris became Britain’s youngest-ever F1 star
All about car 