One of the main investors in the company wanted to own and drive the first C8 Aileron. He preferred the original show car prototype which was presented on Geneva in 2008 to the ‘production’ version which was presented on Geneva in 2009.
Problem was that the show car was merely a static dummy. Most of the components were simply not road-worthy. A thorough analysis had to be done to determine which components could be used (and we scrapped about half of them in the end).
The customer wanted the vehicle to be converted from LHD to RHD, since he wanted to use it for commuting to his office in London. Furthermore he wanted an automatic transmission, which made us decide to use the newer C8 Aileron drivetrain. This aided to the emissions requirements from the UK IVA as well. Underbody though it required a completely new design rear frame, to host the new drivetrain and altered suspension. The front was redesigned to feature a better crash structure.
Some extra features requested by the customer were a new powerful audio system as well as navigation. Custom housing for this had to be created, as well as extra sound proofing to actually make it worth the effort. For some V8 music is not enough.
This car also featured a new custom wheel design, since the show car featured machined facia which were welded to donor-rims. They were not considered to be safe, so I designed custom items. This time the challenge was to integrate the turbine spokes on a center-nut mounting. The design was modified compared to the Aileron wheels to create less visual mass around the wheel nut by extending the spokes while adjusting the ET-values and tire-/rim-width, allowing the wheels to be positioned correctly relative to the suspension and vehicle body.
Never knew a fuel filler cap could give such a headache.