Motoring News
Yesterday, 26 November 2016How to make a people's car from scratch
What exactly is involved in turing a bunch of ideas for a new car into three-dimensional reality? We find out as we create a people's car for 2025 and beyond
There can’t be a car lover alive who hasn’t dreamed of building a car of his or her own. Most will never get close to it, but that doesn’t prevent the conceit lurking within us that, given the tools, we could do it better than the professionals.
We never could, of course. Just understanding the legal constraints on a modern car design is years of work for dozens of people – and that’s before you start studying the true needs of customers in a big market sector, or creating something decent at a price they could afford. The process needs a depth of expertise we simple users just don’t understand.
Read about the (new) original people's car - the Volkswagen Beetle - here
That’s why we dreamed up this project: to understand and help you to understand more about how a car is created. It’s complex, so we’re dividing the exercise into three parts published two weeks apart. It will culminate in the reveal of a comprehensive set of digital illustrations and a real, live, three-dimensional model in our traditional Christmas double issue in three weeks’ time…
In this first tranche of the story, we discuss the key parameters of the project, the creative team, some early design and engineering decisions and the name we’ve chosen for the car. Next time, we’ll get much more serious about dimensions, design and mechanicals. In the third piece, you’ll hear about the final detail of the job, the kind of info that – for the sake
read moreDriving the Ferrari F12 tdf on wet Welsh mountain roads
The 770bhp Ferrari F12 tdf is ferocious, aggressive and as unforgiving as a wronged mobster. We have the perfect venue for it: cold, wet mountain roads in Wales
The Ferrari F12 tdf is Modena's most unforgiving supercar: a 770bhp, £339,000 V12 with a top speed of 'more than 211mph'. We took one to a wet Wales to see what it's made of.
Running hard uphill, I can see the corner in the distance. But there is still time, time for one more shift, one more opportunity to run that 6.3-litre V12 to 8900rpm, to hear and feel the 770bhp pouring from its block and heads, to listen while that sound sears through my brain. The corner is tighter than it looks; we need the brakes and we need them now. But the Ferrari’s massive carbon discs have it covered. Hot, sticky Pirellis bite into the tarmac, shedding in an instant an unpublishable amount of speed and energy.
The car angles into the turn on a trailing throttle, awaiting further instruction. My right boot needs no second invitation. I feel the power come flooding back to meet us, feel the rear tyres being taxed up to and then beyond their limit. The back eases out, but the steering is so quick that it’s rounded up before you can say ‘opposite lock’. The foot stays down, the V12 soundtrack never wavering as the F12 tdf and I rocket over the hill and far away.
That is the introduction I’d have liked to open this story. The rather less intrepid truth is as follows.
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