FIRST LOOK Tuthill GT ONE Road Legal 90s Le Mans Car

One of the undoubted stars of the show at the Quayle this year is the Tuttle GT1. I could talk you around it or we could hear from the man whose name's on the car, Mr Richard Tuttle. Hello. Thank you for your time. Thank you. This is stunning. Where on earth in your imagination did it come from? Well, there's a chap just standing there who owns many GT1s and he drove in one morning and said, why don't we do something inspired by this car? So here we are. Do you think there's going to be like a revival then of the 90s? I mean, obviously the greatest decade because I come from the 90s. I wish I did. But I've just been looking at the Eccentrica Diablo over there and now we have this. It feels like the 90s is very, very cool, very in vogue. I'm sure as we all get older, there's another generation coming through, so they're going to love 90s stuff. But I think the GT1 era of racing was very special. Yeah. Problem is the cars were compromised because they were homologation cars to create brilliant race cars. What we hope to have achieved here is a great road car inspired by everything that's gone before us. Yeah. And I was going to say, when I think of Tuttle, I tend to think of your rallying and cars skidding around on ice lakes and through forests. So why a supercar? Why didn't you go for kind of an off-roading hypercar instead? Well, a couple of years ago, we bought the wonderful 911K here, which was a sort of sign of what's possible when you take rally engineering craziness and put it into a really lightweight car. So that was something. We have many lovely ideas up our sleeves, but Elliot came along and you can't say no. So yeah, here we are. There'll be some lovely stuff coming. And of course, we will never forget our roots. We'll be in Kenya next year with 20 Safari cars, obviously. Fantastic. So coming to the spec of this, I know we're going to open up the rear clamp. Do you want to do that now? Should we open it now? Yeah, let's do it. Oh, yes. That's supercar theatre. Should we do the front as well? There we go. There we go. All the way. There we go. I'll come and join you. Exploded car. So there are two engine options, are there not? Can you just explain what the differences are? There are. So there are very few mechanical options in this car. There's lovely trim options to discuss, but I love normally aspirated engines. So we're designing a four litre engine inspired by a 911K engine, of course. And then the original car had two turbos. Most GT1s have turbos. So we will be offering a forced induction twin turbo car. The twin turbo is going to be over 600 horsepower and then the naturally aspirated one. Five in a bit. What, 500? Obviously the 911K engine, that revved to 11,000 rpm. Can we expect something similar in this? I'm not going to say it's impossible, but no, it will not rev to 11,000 rpm. You've got to remember this is a GT car. Oh, right. So you want something... Tour relaxed. Touring. Let's go. Let's cover some distance. But the critical thing is it has to perform as a road car. So bumpy roads, amazing mountain roads, you name it. British roads. Yeah, it's not for the racetrack. So we'll try and achieve all that we want there. And as well as two options of engine, there are two options of transmission. Can you just tell us about those as well? So I fitted in the test car here a dual clutch gearbox because I love them. And I know that's controversial because I'm a driver and I'm supposed to say I love manuals. Well, I love manuals. But again, I think for a lot of the driving we do today and in a car of this sort, I think it's an option we should offer. And so if I was having one, that would be it. But of course, for a manual, there's so much demand. And of course, if I start with a dual clutch gearbox, I can always go to manual. It's harder to come the other way. I see. I have to say, if it's me, my one will be a naturally aspirated and a manual. I was just thinking as well, you're going to build 22 of these. Yeah. Is that right? Is it going to be 11 and 11 of each? Or is it just a case of whatever the customers decide? I'm not that clever and I don't want to predict. So no, whatever anyone wants. But I think we'll keep it fairly simple. Yeah. I mean, it looks, speaking of simplicity, it does look incredibly clean under here. I mean, can you just tell us about some of the details? We've got a ceramic coated exhaust here. Yeah, that's beautiful Inconel. This is a damper, which is our first in-house damper. There are very, very few production items here. This is all bespoke for this car. So double wishbone front and rear. It's glorious. And actually, it's beautiful. It's very, very simple. And it's going to be built in the UK? Yep, in Oxfordshire. Sunny Oxfordshire, which is very similar to California, as you know. Yeah, of course. So yeah, no, we're ready to get going on this one. So in terms of the way this thing looks on top, you're obviously inspired by a GT1. But what are the other influences? Well, as you know, my speciality is making cars work, making them practical and mechanical. But on this project, we teamed up with the most talented designer. There is a guy called Florian Flatout. We've worked together on a few previous projects. And what you see has come from his head. And it's not my first time doing something of this nature, but I can tell you it's an incredible process. And people like Florian are very, very special. And if someone was in the market, do they need to come to you with a donor car and a great big suitcase full of money? How does it work? Yes, I think the suitcase thing might have to be considered these days. But no, the reality is we source the donor for you, help you with that process. But yes, we start with a production car to start with. And I know it's difficult to put a price on these things because they are so bespoken. They are so unique. But if we had to put a number on it? Well, neither of us are sitting down, but it's £1.5. £1.5? We are sterling. So yeah, £1.5, which is a tremendous amount of money. But it's a tremendous amount of car. And the cost of development is a significant factor. Of the 22 units, are any still left for sale as of this morning? I mean, you're surrounded by people. You've got a big crowd. Surely they're all spoken for. It's hard to predict. But let's just say before we arrived, 50% were spoken for. So I'm not brilliant at maths, but that means there's 11 left. Yeah, I don't think there will be by the end of today, judging by the crowds there. Richard, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your interest. Talking us around your next chapter of Tuttle.