Oh, very nice. This is very good. You see how he's changed in character?
She wants to run, doesn't she?
Pulls nicely.
Welcome to an episode of Jay Leno's Garage. The car featured today, a Porsche 992.1. Fair to say, heavily, heavily modified. This is being brought to us through Graham Rahal. You know, the famous Rahal family out of Indianapolis. Well, they're in the car business and they are bringing this to America. It's developed by RML. Let's meet the CEO, Paul Dickinson. Paul, come on in here. How are you? Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you, too. It's great to be here in this fabulous location.
Well, nice to have you. Now, tell us what we have here. You know, certainly must be the most modified car in history, the Porsche. Everybody takes it and adds their touch. And you're a technology firm out of the UK, eh?
Yes, yes. I'm from RML. We're a 40-year-old automotive and motorsports company. Really been focusing on motorsports in our original period, and we've branched that out into engineering, mainly for the big OEMs and special small projects.
All right. So if Porsche has something they want to hand off, you guys take it and develop it for Porsche.
Yeah, we often do low-volume white-label projects. Many cars you may have driven, there might be a few even here, they're actually built by us, but we can't talk about it.
So that led us into expanding into our bespoke division and starting to create cars for customers that we could put our own badge on the bonnet. And here we have today the RML GTH, the GT hypercar.
Well, you know, that's fascinating because so many companies, GM, Rolls-Royce, everybody, they don't do everything in-house, but they reach out and you sign a paper saying you cannot tell anybody we did this. And you're that guy. And I think that's fascinating. What have we done here? This was a 992.1 Turbo, correct?
A Turbo S. Turbo S. Okay.
So what got us thinking, what was the inspiration for this project, was a few years ago the new hypercar rules came into Le Mans. And that got us thinking about, well, what would happen if Porsche were to do a GT1 car like they did in the '90s today. And that was what inspired us initially with this project from a visual point of view. And then we started to look at, well, what could we do with that car to demonstrate our capabilities. And if you know the 911 lineup, at one end of the scale you've got the Turbo S, which this car is based upon, and that is a very competent road car, reasonably comfortable for a sports car. You can use it as a daily driver.
But it's not much fun on the track, so you can't really take it as a track day car. At the other end of the scale we've got the GT3 RS. Fabulous track day car. Great fun on the road for a very short period of time.
A very short period. Yeah.
But not something you could use as your daily driver.
So that was the inspiration behind this car, which was to take a Turbo S, ensure that when it's in its road mode it's as comfortable and usable as that Turbo S, but then when you get it to a track, using all our motorsport experience, you can change all the settings and it suddenly becomes a hypercar. So a GT car on the road, a hypercar on the track that's as good at the track as a GT3 RS, but you can drive it to the track without having a headache.
No, I got you. Okay. So that tiny niche. There's always that tiny niche of people that want something different. Because I know I have driven the GT3 and it is a bit of a kidney punch, you know.
Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Great car. Great car. Great car. And this is, I mean, obviously this is all carbon fiber, I assume.
Yeah. So we approached this how we'd normally do a motorsport program. We took a Turbo S, we stripped all the bodywork off and scanned the whole car in, so we could create in CAD a digital image of the car. Then from that CAD we used our CFD tools and our chassis simulation tools to fully build this car digitally. We didn't go to clay, no models. We went fully digital with the goggles to give it this visual. But it's very much a form follows function kind of car, right? So we have a fully carbon body. It's two-piece: A-pillar back is one clam, and then the front, the hood for you guys in America, is a second clam, right? That opens up. And then obviously the doors and the bumpers and the fenders. So that was to get an aerodynamically efficient body shell that could drive the power and the suspension and the hydraulics that we put into the car.
So you're like hot rod guys who went to graduate school.
Yes, with very big foreheads. That's how we often explain it.
But see, I always find that fascinating because in America you have the guys come up from the street, and then they get introduced to the guys at MIT, and together they make just an amazing product, you know. And that's what's fun, you have the sort of street smarts combined with technology and science. I love the integrated McLaren-type hood scoop here.
So the roof scoop is again, that's form follows function. Normal Turbo S, the side vents feed the engine, but this engine we've had tuned. Stock it's about 650. This goes up to 920 horsepower.
But to get enough air in, we use the roof scoop, so that feeds it into the engine. The side scoops are actually part of the CFD work that we did. So the air comes in through the front dams to go through all of the radiators. This beautiful sculpted line that you see, that looks like a beautiful form, that is there simply to keep the air managed as it comes out the wheel arch. As it goes down the side, it shoots through these rear vents and out the back. So that's all about reducing drag, because there's plenty of downforce as you can see in its standard mode with the front and rear splitters and spoilers.
And it's hours and days in a wind tunnel, isn't it? Getting this exactly right.
In a digital wind tunnel. So this is all done in CFD.
And it took us from the initial idea, we signed off the idea, you know, Pebble Beach 2024. We had the first running prototype on the road in May 25.
Oh, okay. Very cool. Nine months to go from an idea to a production prototype.
Which is again, it's the motorsport approach to an automotive problem.
And Rahal comes into the — Graham comes in because he will be selling these cars for you here in America.
Yeah, he's our US agent. This is the first car that we've delivered to him.
First place it's been is here.
Oh, that's just — wow, we're excited you chose us. It's a beautiful, beautiful project, and it, you know, obviously it's easily recognizable as a Porsche until you look around and you just see a lot of — another hood scoop back here. Nicely done.
Yeah, and that's to cool the engine. So the cooling goes in there. The engine's fed from up here.
And this is your own wing. It's not a Porsche wing.
No, so it's a unique wing. It's got a three-stage hydraulically operated rear end plate here. So in standard mode, the car produces about three times as much downforce as the Turbo S it's based on.
And then in track mode, the ring deploys. That's an extra 15 to 20% of downforce. And then when you're on the straight and you want to get a bit of extra pace, you've also got the push-to-pass DRS mode that opens up the wing.
Okay. Oh, nicely done. All right, very nice. And what has been done to the motor itself?
So effectively to get it from the 650 up to the 900-plus mark, the base engine is fabulous, so we don't need to change the base engine. So the focus has been on the turbochargers, the intercoolers, getting the air in quicker and getting the air out quicker, and then a map. So it's the key ancillaries rather than the core engine.
So it's a relatively stock motor.
Yeah, with just those bits added on.
Just fine-tuning the aerodynamics and managing that. Fascinating. Okay. Stock brakes.
Yeah, standard carbon ceramics you get on a Turbo S. Fabulous brakes. No need to do anything extra. Even with 900 horsepower as a track monster, they are completely and utterly sufficient.
Lighter or heavier than the stock car?
Even though the body's carbon, you'll see it's quite a bit bigger than the standard Turbo S. So the weight comes out about the same, because there's a lot of weight in the hydraulic system, because as well as hydraulics operating the rear wing and the front splitter, they also operate the height of the suspension and the damping.
Which is critical, because again, the key part of this, and how we work with OEMs, is this has to be usable performance, right? So the suspension has three height settings. You've got the normal road height, then you also have a nose lift which adds an extra 25 mil.
That pretty much gets you over anything, into any parking garage.
And then when you're at the track, the front end drops by 25 mil. The back only drops by 10, so you get more rake, which gives you better racetrack performance.
And that's all adjustable on the fly, right?
Yeah, the steering wheel. We've got four separate controllers on the steering wheel that help you do aero, ride height and damper settings, as well as the one that does the engine settings.
Transmission is standard.
8-speed DSG. Again, a very well-engineered gearbox from Porsche that we don't need to touch.
Yeah, I was going to say, because they pretty much got it down. All right, have you taken this to the Nürburgring or any of those deals?
We plan to go to the Nürburgring. The project target was that you could drive this car in comfort to the Nürburgring, then do a lap of equivalent pace to the GT3 RS, and then drive it home again. And all the simulation that we use, which is our motorsport background, suggests that this car will be able to achieve that.
And now, do you hope to relate some of this technology to their road-going models in the future, or is this just a totally separate deal?
It's a totally separate deal. This is not affiliated with Porsche. It's, you know, there's quite a lot of us who play in the market of modified Porsches. Some people focus on more classical models, right? But we're taking the latest model and pushing it to its boundaries, really.
And GTH — H stands for hypercar.
Yes, so it's two cars in one. The GT is on the road, H is a hypercar.
Right. Well, it's just beautifully done. Very nice. Is this your own color, too?
This is Graham's color. Graham Rahal's color.
Oh, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a fabulous orange that really works, because as you can see, he's left some visual carbon stripes. They're not black stripes, they're visual carbon. So you can see this is not a Porsche with a body kit. This is a full unique body. And for example, if you look at the stripe on the side where the GTH is, that's not painted black. That's the visual carbon that we've left, to show it flows through the door into the wing, which is a nice little touch that you can't see from a distance, but when you get up close to the car, they're the kind of surprising delights that really make a difference in the marketplace.
And those are Cup 2 tires. Michelin.
Well, that's the tire, isn't it? Everybody has that now. It's the best one. I've always been really happy with them.
It's a good balance. You can use it on road with not too much wear, and it's perfectly acceptable as a track tire. We do offer customers the Cup 2R if they're going to be really track-focused, but that's a no-cost option.
And massive. I mean, that rotor is almost as big as the wheel itself.
Nicely done. Cool. What else do we have here? Anything else around the back?
Oh, yeah. So we have a very big diffuser. It's a flat floor approach. Then, it's, you know, this is where you can definitely see the length we added to the car. We call the rear sort of a car in a car, and the hole here is about focusing on dealing with the airflow as it comes out from the car. So minimal disruption to reduce drag. It's all about reducing drag, because you can focus your downforce on the wing, and again with a diffuser sucking it down at the back.
Now, is this the first car under the RML banner?
It's our second car that's been branded. We launched a bespoke division back in 2020. We did a very short run of what was called the RML short wheelbase, which was a Ferrari 550-based product.
That was, you know, our take on a '50s or '60s GT car.
And then this is our second car, where we've moved into a more technology-focused, modern, forward-looking project to help project our capabilities to the wider world.
How big is the company? How many employees?
Okay, so that's a nice size. Big enough to manufacture, but smaller.
Yeah, we're fully vertically integrated. It's quite interesting. You know, we have four divisions, right? We have the power division, which as well as looking after engines is focused on battery tech. So we actually produce the most power-dense battery that's approved for automotive use in the world.
It's fitted to an American supercar that may or may not be built in California, just around the road.
I wonder, I wonder which one that could be.
I possibly can't say, as you know.
I drove it and it's fabulous.
It's fabulous, isn't it? Because of the battery, I would like to say.
So that's our power division. Engineering, there's all sorts of things from white label. You know, we talk about the problems we have. I was at a car launch of a continuation model in London a couple of weeks ago. I won't say any more details, as people will join the dots. And I'm stood there with the car. It's looking beautiful, and it really was beautiful. And you have all the press and the special guests looking at it, giving such plaudits to the brand who've launched it. And I stood there knowing that it was us, going, 'But it is a fabulous car.'
You're like the writer of a hit movie. They go, 'He's the writer.' Oh, see, you're not getting the credit. Well, now you get the credit you deserve. And this is a fine example of what you've done. I mean, it must be frustrating, because people go, 'Boy, the people at so-and-so are really good.' Actually, we did that.
And that's just the way life is. And then motorsport is a big division. We've just launched a new racing car in the British touring car world, which has been great fun in the recent weeks. And then our final division is the bespoke division, and this is where we do direct-to-consumer sales, where we can really project the brand and use all the skills from the other three divisions to create something awesome that shows our capabilities.
I guess we can't really even see the engine here, can we?
That is the problem of rear engine. Now, what was good about rear-engined is it really helped, because we've lengthened the wheelbase, right?
But that makes a difference. But because it's rear-engined and we were changing the suspension completely, we just did it through the linkages, and we also widened the track 100 mil.
Now, there's no spacers here. This is done properly — re-engineered suspension, right?
To bring the width out both front and rear.
We haven't talked about the interior yet.
Yeah, let's talk about it. Let's open the door.
Now, to a Porsche customer, an interior is a very important place, you know, because Porsche guys often like a Porsche interior, right? So what we've done here is rather than throw away what was already a very good interior, we've just added to that. So to a customer it still very much feels like he's in a Porsche-based product, but we've just added — for example, this car comes with the track pack, so we put the Recaro seats in, a nice little bit of color to match the outside, a rear cage, and you have the four-point harnesses if you wish. About half our customers have gone with the Recaros. The other half have stayed with the Porsche comfort seat that we've had retrimmed, and one customer has even kept the two rear seats in.
Oh, is that right? That's funny. Yeah, it says 40th anniversary on the mats. What's that? The 40th anniversary of?
Our company. So we were set up in 1984. So we came up with the idea in 2024, in our 40th anniversary year. The actual code name internally was P39. It was our 39th whole vehicle project. So our volume decision is to make 39 of these plus car zero, which takes it to 40, which is the 40 to match the 40th. So that's a little bit of a story we've put into the volume.
How long have you been with the company?
I've been with the company just two years.
Okay. Oh, just two years. Okay.
I've spent my life in automotive, in the big OEMs, right? And I started off as an apprentice back when I was 16 at Rover Group as it was, which became Jaguar Land Rover. I was there for 15 years, then moved to Bentley for 10, where I ended up running Mulliner, which is what got me into this kind of world of special low-volume cars. A couple of years at Lotus, and then the opportunity came to join RML and do something quite different in a smaller company. But it's been very exciting and great fun.
You know, I think it's great fun. Yeah, I mean, I kind of like that old school way. I like that British way of being an apprentice, and you learn from the bottom up and the whole deal, you know.
Yeah, you did learn an awful lot, and there's a lot of characters, especially in those days back in the late '90s.
Yeah, it's RML Bespoke, it says on here.
Yes, that's our bespoke division.
Bespoke is not a word people use much in America, but it means obviously unique to you.
Yes, it's built especially for that person, you know.
Yeah, very good. Well, I mean, the craftsmanship just speaks for itself. I mean, even the shut lines and everything is beautiful. The paint...
All done in-house. The only thing on here that's not us is the carbon fiber — we don't do that ourselves. But we're based in the UK in what's called Motorsport Valley. So there's some big key suppliers there that support the F1 teams and motorsport. So getting carbon fiber bodywork makes more sense to outsource than to bring in-house. But the rest of it is all done in-house in our workshop.
So for the person who buys one of these, it comes into America as a Porsche. It's not, you know, here we have something called show and display. You can only go 2,500 miles and it's not going to meet emission... I mean, this is...
It's still a Turbo S. The customer supplies us their donor car from the US, right? We service it effectively and ship it back to them.
Oh, I see. Okay. So they buy the car, then ship it to you, and then the work gets done.
Okay, so if you have an older car, it could be — it has to be a 992.1, but it doesn't have to be a 24 model year, right? It has to be of that period.
Yes, which is the end of the last Porsches that are non-hybrid. So it's the last.
Yeah, and it's about 20 weeks to do this from receiving the donor car.
Assuming we've agreed the spec already with the customer and they don't want something particularly snazzy on the paint job. We've got a couple of cars at the moment having color flip as well as visual carbon, which is quite a complicated process, you know, that adds...
Well, 20 weeks is — that's not bad. I mean, you know, I think I'm used to Morgan: you order the car now and you can get it in 2050. Oh, fabulous, 2050. My god, that's...
Well, again, we're used to building race cars. Yeah. So, you know, the car comes into the shop, the first task we do is the team take the bodywork off. Some of it bolts off, some of it we have to grind off. Don't touch the inner safety cell. You know, Porsche spend a lot of money making this a very safe car. We don't mess around with that. We use an external guy called Littfield to do the engine work. They're specialists in Porsche tuning. So the car goes to them, they tune the engine, it comes back. We then bond on the carbon body. It's a very scary 20 minutes. There's 20 minutes for it to cure. So if you don't get it on straight, first time, you're in trouble, you know. So there's four guys. It's not heavy, but it's one huge piece of carbon that you've got to line up. And the bodies, even though, you know, they come down a production line at Porsche, they're very precise, there's always still a little bit of wiggle in that — nobody's exactly the same when it comes to fitting on top.
Well, I always like that British cottage industry kind of thing. Small firm, small team, you know, going back to the BRM of the early '50s and all of those cars, Lotus and all of them. It's just fascinating. And I always think small teams like that work better than big conglomerates.
