"Octavia" a 1000hp+ 1971 Aston Martin DBS from Ringbrothers and Ragle Design

So this is Octavia, a 1971 Aston Martin DBS built by Ring Brothers. This is the result of around 4,000 hours in design and CAD and over 8,000 hours building the car to result in what you see here. And who better to tell you about the car than the people that designed and built it. All right, so first let's start with the design aspect. You know, on paper what this thing looks like before the project even starts getting pulled apart or built together. And this is Gary Ragle or Ragle Designs and he's responsible for the exterior and the interior. So when this project was dropped in your lap, how do you even get started with something like this? What's the general ethos? Usually with these cars, whenever you're redesigning a vintage car, I analyze what parts work, what are successful in the original design, and what needs a little bit of help. So this car in particular is a beloved vehicle and we knew we needed to tread lightly but make something, you know, beautiful at the same time. So the original profile of the 71 DBS is gorgeous. We didn't touch that at all. The roof line is the same, the glass planes are the same, the entire greenhouse is nearly identical to the original DBS with the exception of the detailing. Where the original car I felt was lacking a little bit of impact was in the body side. Earlier Aston Martins from the 50s and 60s were super sexy, had a gorgeous rear quarter panel hip on them, and later ones on up today, 90s, 2000s, and modern Aston Martins certainly have a lot of that sex appeal. But the 71 was a little bit slab-sided. So that was really where we started just moving the track width around, getting a little bit more flair and sexiness in the rear quarter panel. The quarter panel's been extended by three and a half inches per side, sorry four and a half inches per side in the rear, three and a half on the front fender. So it's just a little bit wider. Just a little, just a touch. 345 width tires, the rear of the car measures 81 inches wide. So we started with the width of the trailer opening and basically subtracted an inch to give them a half inch on either side so the car would fit in the trailer. Okay, now the car is gorgeous, but are there elements of this that are for functional sake, let's say? Is there anything that was specifically designed to improve the characteristics of the car or even performance? Absolutely. So every scoop, I am a big, big proponent of functionality and design. So every air inlet and outlet is functional on this car. We deleted the quarter window here and made a functional scoop for the rear brakes. So there's a duct in there that feeds air directly to the rear caliper. Very cool. Walking around the front, this vent, which was on the original car and on Aston Martin's till today, it's an important part of Aston Martin design. This vents the wheelhouse, so this goes directly into the inner wheelhouse on every car that's a high pressure zone. So releasing that pressure actually adds downforce to the front of the car. Here, these finned inserts release hot air from the engine compartment as well as at the cowl. And the iconic Aston hood scoop we carried over from the original 71, and that ducts air directly into an air box through a filter and into the supercharger. So very cool. The real deal. Yeah. You know what I like about that? And so obviously you mentioned it was inspired by various Aston Martins, both past and present, but you've also managed to add functionality aspects, which were very similar to cars that you would find on sale today. Some of which is slightly different. Aston Martin uses a similar event, but for their downforce as opposed to their brake ducts. And that's cool to see all the purpose functionality that actually goes into this car as well. Now, specifically, is there any sort of awesome cues for this car? Like this color is pretty spectacular as well. And obviously Aston has a very famous signal, let's say with Aston Martin or even James Bond. Is there anything in this car in particular that relates to that? There's a few subtle James Bond hints in this vehicle. You'll see some under the hood. You'll see some in the interior. The color is double O silver. Very nice. So it ties in with the James Bond theme without going overboard, of course. Another really cool Aston Martin aspect is the shark nose. The original car had this, although the front end is a very different configuration. So we actually widened it and did kind of a three-sided chamfered approach to the plan view of the front of the car. It gives it a little bit more of a modern look, but tying in with the chrome bumper still gives you that vintage flavor that I think is important for this car. Yeah, this thing is incredible. The design language does feel right at home, especially with the current Aston Martin lineup. It's something that, you know, who would be surprised if you saw this next to a Valor, for example, inside an Aston Martin dealership. In terms of the overall design, were there particular things that you found yourself revisiting consistently, maybe revising a couple times before the final production, I suppose? One of the most challenging aspects was the hood. It's a clamshell hood, reversed hinge. So we had to scan hinges. It has Aston Martin Vantage hinges off of late model Vantage and develop the pivot points off of that scan for the hinges. So that dictated our parting lines clearance at the A-pillar. Obviously, fit and finish is a lot tighter on this car than any production vehicle. So that presents a lot of challenges when you have a part that this size moving as much as it does. Yeah, a lot of real estate here on top of the car. Okay, and then you also designed the interior, right? I did. So what do we have going on in here? It's very much the same approach as the exterior. Take a look at what works and enhance that and take a look at what needs some help and redesign that. So if you're familiar with these cars, you'll notice a few elements, but we have taken a little bit more liberty with the interior design. We moved the occupants rearward in the car. So that gave us the opportunity to get a little bit more depth to the IP, which always gives you more three-dimensionality and a little bit more interesting design. But it still retains the classic round gauges that the original car had. There's three accessory gauges in the center stack there with a hood around it, just like the original 71 DBS. We have a torque tube with a six-speed transaxle in the rear. So the tunnel was quite a bit larger on this vehicle than original. So we had to work around that. But there's some interesting aspects with the e-brake there. All of the hard parts on the interior are 3D printed stainless. So that gave us, again, an opportunity to do some really interesting design touches. The gear shift is hollow. You can see through it. The e-brake has a little bit of that James Bond kind of hint with it looks like the gun barrel, a pistol. Sure. So there's a few little fun Easter eggs like that in this. Is part of the design process then for this car usually going back and watching old James Bond movies and then coming back to the drawing board? Absolutely, because honestly, I've never really been into James Bond movies. So I had to kind of brush up on my Bond history and, you know, even the name of the car, Octavia, that was something that the owner came up with. And I had to study up on that too before making the badge. So he was a Bond fan and inspired the build. All right, cool. So there you have it. That's a quick look at the design for the exterior and the interior. Thank you very much, Gary. And next, let's move on to the powertrain. Gosh, that is huge. Yeah, you get a sense of the width with the car looking at the hood from the front. So yeah, so this is insane looking at everything underneath. Obviously, it looks right at home in here, but then at the same time, you know that there's been a significant change to everything that is under here. It's essentially built from scratch, right? Specifically for this use case. Exactly. Chassis, you know, with the roadster shop, scanning the original car and working, like Gary said, off of that and building the chassis. We reached out to Aston in the beginning to help us with the motor, but they just said at the time they didn't have the bandwidth to help us when we were in the beginning of this. So, you know, Ford owned Aston for a period of time in the 80s, 90s, I believe. And, you know, if you looked at the original Aston Martin motor, the five, four, three, whatever that was, double overhead cam, actually similar in size and everything to the Coyote. So that was a fit for us because we knew that we knew these Coyotes, they run good. We can work on them. And since we didn't have an opportunity to use an Aston motor, a newer Aston motor, and not the original one. So we came up with the Coyote and worked with Harrop on this supercharger to center everything with Gary's design, wanting everything to seal, you know, the airbox and everything to have function. He had to really manipulate the supercharger a lot, make a whole new brick inside it, change where the inlets are and change the throttle body position on it. That's a lot of effort. Yeah, it's a lot of effort. You know, all new shaft had to be made for the supercharger because the throttle body had to be over above it. And so, yeah, there's a ton going on that now you look at it and say, oh, that's just the way it was from Harrop, but it's not. Okay. So supercharger is a 2.9 liter, right? I think it's actually a 2.6, but, you know, I believe it's smaller than like the Whipple 2.9 and things, but... Okay. And the Coyote, is that built at all? That's a five liter. Yeah. Wagner Motorsports we work with. Of course. They got into Coyotes too. So they did the motor for us. It's a Gen 2 Coyote in this thing. Okay. And it's good for 805 or whatever? This thing actually, the motor actually dynoed at 1016. Is that at the crank or at the wheel? At the crank. Yeah. I don't know what the wheel is. Being a manual would save a little of that power, but I'm not sure we'll stick, keep it all in there, but that's what the motor dynoed at. At least Casey told me that. Yeah. So obviously you guys can kind of dial that down. Yeah. We will definitely tweak it, drivability. I'm not saying we have the right gear in the rear yet, but well, that's what we need to work on. Sure. Okay. So fully designed here. Now this also has some hidden accessories, right? Kind of when you look at the top, you just see the very clean display of the engine, but you guys still have engine accessories. I can see you have power steering. Correct. You also have AC and other components like that in this car as well, right? So modern amenities while making it as clean as possible underneath. What is the transmission that you guys are running in this? This is a Tremec six speed transaxle car. So it's all out of like a C6. It's been reworked by Bowler. So it's got a carbon fiber torque tube. The tube isn't, but the shaft is all reworked. So it's meant to take the power that this thing has. And we were talking a little bit off camera and this is near 50-50 weight distribution as well, right? It is. It's right at 50-50 and that's from moving wheelbase ahead three inches to moving the motor back five and three quarter inches. So this car, this motor is stuffed back away. So yeah, I mean the front of the engine is fully set behind the suspension mounts here, which is insane. So it's a mid engine thousand horsepower capable supercharged engine. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's insane with the transaxle in the back. So, okay. That's incredibly cool. Obviously a look at the powertrain there. I think next we have to really start talking about the extra engineering you actually get to this point because it's insane to look at. It's pretty fun. Yeah. Words cannot describe. And I guess we also have to point out why we're here, just the actual Bartiti and even the Ashton valve covers there for the Coyote, which of course all made, but obviously a nice custom touch for James Bond, right? Correct. Gotta, gotta keep with the Bond theme. He sure did a lot for the movie and for, for Ashton, I believe the whole Ashton is James. So it's a, it's something we, we all like and kind of really a British car for us that we've always wanted to undertake and feel honored that we had this ability to do it. Yeah. Well, I guess why you mentioned that, it's kind of a good point. This is kind of a car that you guys, the customer kind of gave you somewhat of an open look, right? He, he actually, um, came to Jim and said, you know, what do you guys want to build? And Jim said, well, we've always wanted to do a European muscle car, whatever that means. And I think he literally Googled European muscle car and a 71 Aston Martin popped up. And so we took it from there and built this. Yeah. He's just been an amazing, amazing customer. So moving on to the rest of the car, there's obviously a lot that had to be done here. Now, how much of the car is actually still 71 DBS? Uh, it's just little trinkets kind of everywhere besides the design. Really? We used to, you know, some, you know, uh, you know, since the glass profile and everything is up there based off the original, we use some of the inner, um, glass, um, tracks. We use switches. We, from the doors, um, parts up the engine to make the Luganda got rid of the Luganda portion part. And, uh, you know, there's a lot more little things than, than I even remember. You know, it's kind of nice to have you guys ask questions because a lot of it you forget. So exact number, I really don't know, but, um, we, we obviously don't use on this build particular. It's kind of like a Camaro we did. We pretty, we intended to use more being the inner structure, but it just didn't lend itself to it. So it was, we feel we can make a better product if we CNC the complete cage for it. Okay. And then build off that cage for the panels. Okay. So there's obviously a lot of modern engineering and then construction wise, there's a fair amount of steel, but then a heavy, heavy use of carbon fiber. Correct. So in terms of the overall construction, are we talking all the exterior panels are carbon fiber and just that inner cell is all steel. The whole floor in the car has got like a dual floor pan. Um, it's all steel. That portion is all steel. The weight's in a good spot. It's down low. Um, and then the cage in it. And then basically you got to work off that to build the panels and, you know, have something to work off of to bond to, to, to create that. Okay. And then what are we looking at underneath the car in terms of chassis and suspension layout? It's a roadster shop chassis that they designed for what we wanted along with Gary and I, we worked together and Jim and everybody, since we've used them before, what we wanted to do, you know, meaning we did want to move the weight. So we did go transaxle independent. We did want to use true pin drive wheels. So we, we machined the uprights to put in, um, pressed in bearings off from, we scanned nine, nine, six stuff to create a nine, nine, Yeah. So you have proper, obviously Porsche has a heavy use in terms of motorsports, right? So everything is also very functional in that aspect too. Um, now one thing I do want to kind of point out as well is just the actual wheels and being redesigned. How did you guys decide where you wanted to do more custom stuff and kind of also figure out where you're doing Aston Martin or even motorsports and styled aspects of the vehicle? Well, I think as much as we could from that original 71 is what we wanted to do, including the wheel design. Um, it was, you know, really based off the original wheel. If you saw him with the functional like scoops on the original wheels, which height for me, seeing wheels a lot, I've never really noticed that before that style. So we, we, we incorporated that look and then they're much more closed off the original wheel, but they're a 15 inch wheel. If we'd have built this as heavy as that, it, we did it in the model. It looked really heavy and Gary said it would, but I really didn't believe him because I really wanted to go more close, but you know, Aston's are not only are they mean looking, they're still very elegant and absolutely. And to retain that, we really need felt we'd need to open the wheel to, to create that. So we did open the wheel yet still used very, the theme definitely is you could tell it came from the original wheel. Yeah. I think it's good that you opened it up especially because you have these awesome Brembo brakes behind it and even multi-piece actual discs, which looks incredibly cool in terms of just displaying the actual performance of the car. And so I'm assuming it's coil overs all around as well, right? And so everything underneath the car was essentially purpose built, including, as you mentioned earlier, the powertrain choices. So you guys essentially built exactly what you want to do with no compromises for anything anywhere. Exactly. Okay. Now coming around to the rear here, I do want to point out that there are some really cool features. So obviously we have a lot of the really cool glass work, but even the sort of can tell design here in the back and even the exhaust system. What are some of the elements here in the back? Like, for example, the camera system, that's actually in here that you added to sort of improve functionality. Let's say Gen-Techs was really great about building the cameras, building the mirrors and the camera and the visors. And they're an OE company. They build probably your vehicle at home. They probably build 90%, 80, 90% of all the rearview mirrors in cars, European and American. And they're amazing people. And they did bi-spoke mirrors for us, visors that are self-dimming. And so you look through them, they're like basically your sunglasses that immediately will turn. If you come over a hill and you're bam, they'll turn dark. If the sun is that bright. Yeah. So I guess you guys also help with the OE build quality, not only in your experiences building custom cars, but obviously by working by certain people who can help you build the correct stuff. So you have power adjustable mirrors and even rear visor cameras for the rearview mirror to just build the impeccable quality that you see here. We really wanted to feel, and honestly, I felt like this was probably the first car we built that could have been built by an automaker. It kind of looks more OE than a hot rodder did. Oh, absolutely. That's just because of more design time, more money. And yeah, I feel like we had the best customer, you know, machine the bumpers and, you know, in three pieces, our machines can't do it in one piece, especially, you know, you'd had to have a block of aluminum, you know, this was bad enough. Weight wise, I think there's 600 pounds of aluminum to make that bumper. Like in the side trim, I believe it was 200 and some pounds with fixturing to a three pound part, right? You need that much aluminum. So yeah. And that's the same with the bumpers, front and rear and the exhaust tips and just like the metal for the exhaust tip, the stainless was a thousand dollars, you know, just the material cost. It's a lot more than what you're looking at there, you know, there's a right side and some other parts, but yeah, it adds up. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean the quality speaks for itself, you know, the closer you look at the carbon fiber, like it's really, really hard to get quality carbon fiber to look the way it does here. Killed it, you know, with the weave and, you know, you can buy weed carbon, but this is not, this is actually just cut that nice and put together that nice, which is pretty spectacular. And if you note that spoiler floats over the carbon, so it's like, okay, car's painted. Now we got to put that in. Well, it's got a cage in it. So how do we fit that in? You can't fit it through the trunk. You got to come through the back while you got a cage in the way. So we had to think of all that ahead of time to make the cave removal portions removable so we could get all that in. But you also did in a very elegant sense, right? I think if somebody were to come in and look at the car, especially without the knowns, look at the interior, like they're not going to see any signs of a cage being in there or crash structure elements. We didn't want any of it. It was strictly for strength. Yeah, it is a gorgeous car. Thanks. So, all right, cool. Well, thank you for your time. Yeah. This is a gorgeous car. You guys nailed it. I love everything about this. This is just a really wild build. And this is the second British car you guys have built? Yeah, we did a Rolls and we're actually doing another Rolls and we're hoping to sell one more of these. Very cool. Very cool. All right. So with that, that is the end of the video. I hope you guys enjoyed that look at this crazy Ringbrothers build. Obviously a lot of folks involved and you guys have been building a lot of crazy stuff. And this one is surprising. I think one of the things I mentioned off camera was when you look at it, you just, it feels like a manufacturer vehicle. And then you see the Ringbrothers logo on it. It's just mind blowing. That's a huge compliment because that's really what we wanted to accomplish. So I guess just as a sort of quick question, if somebody wants to start a Ringbrothers build, how does that conversation usually start with you guys? A phone call? Yeah, well, a lot of times it starts with a phone call via an email. And, you know, Nancy will kind of scare you a little first. So you understand kind of what we really want to be up front what it takes to get into it. And the more we do, the more we want to do as far as stuff like this keeps us younger to use the technology and such. Yeah, I mean, just the usability of this is crazy, right? There's a lot of technology without ruining any of the retro aspects. Is there a traction control or anything? No, not in this. It could be added really easy through the system, the Holley system, but no, this car does not. You just built it as a very raw. Yeah, this is like raw. But with the creature comforts, like the stereo and the AC. And nothing crazy, thumping stereo or, you know, you don't see the screen. It's all based on Bluetooth. And yeah, it's cool. All right. There you have it. That's a quick look at Octavia, a 1971 Aston Martin DBS built by Ring Brothers. If you guys enjoyed the video and could leave a thumbs up, we'd really appreciate it. And consider getting subscribed for more content like that in the future. With that, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.