TOPGEAR GIVES YOU WINGS LIGHT SPEED

‘A FERRARI CRASHED. THE CROWD WHOOPED. COULTHARD DONUTTED’

WWW.TOPGEAR.COM JUNE 2011 $8.95

Australia builds anultra-lightweightsuperstar!

DUCATI SPORTSTER!

STIG TAKES A VACATION

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SSIE DUCATI SPO

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LIGHT SPEEDTHE STIG’S GUIDE TO PRACTICAL MOTORING*

TOPGEAR GIVES YOU WINGS

* WELL, COME ON: IT DOES HAVE A ROOF BOX

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AGERA R DRIVEN831kW, 390km/h and

a carbon roof box... Stig packs

his toothbrush and makes like

a vampire!

I THINK MY BUM’S ON FIRE...TopGear attempts to tow bloody big mining thing. Doesn’t go well

PHO

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“SERIOUSLY, I THINK I’M HAVING a heart attack, right now,” the breaking, sob-stricken voice cracked over the phone.“Don’t you dare, because I’m coming over there to rip that heart out of your chest and then set fire to it,” I didn’t actually reply, although it truly crossed my mind.

The call came about halfway through what you could call a challenging day, and it was from Peter Papanicolaou, a man who looks like the Greek Richard Hammond. He and his brother, Nick, have built a Ducati-powered supercar, the Spartan, in a back shed barely bigger than a bathroom. It’s been a process slightly more arduous than swimming the English Channel in a suit of armour, and finally the car was ready for its close-up. We thought.

Our studio was booked, our photographer was excited and then, at a few minutes before dawn, Peter called to say that, despite not having slept for three days and nights, the Spartan wasn’t quite finished. I can’t print much of what I said, but it ended with him promising to get the car to us by lunch time, to avoid the untimely death of his relatives and the burning of his house.

At 5pm that evening, he admitted defeat. The car was done but, sadly, it was too low to go on the trailer. Fortunately, the story of the Spartan, which starts on page 90, isn’t just a series of blank pages because we merely picked the studio and the snapper up with a helicopter and dropped them in Peter’s backyard the next morning. Or something like that.

The results are spectacular, miraculously, but what’s more amazing is that when we got to Peter’s house and met him for the first time, we didn’t even yell at him, let alone remove his limbs with a blunt spoon. He and Nick were so apologetic, and so passionate, driven and deeply involved in their project, it was impossible to stay angry at them. Indeed, we’ve all become a bit emotionally involved in the Spartan project ourselves now, and we dearly want Ducati to get involved in providing engines to make the whole thing a success. Most of all, though, we can’t wait to drive it.

Peter Pap: Not Richard Hammond

This month

90 / TOPGEAR.COM / JUNE 2011

Spartan supercar

Two and a Half Men.

And a supercarIt started out as a pie-in-the sky fantasy to build a supercar in

a shed. But a�er �ve years of blood, sweat and man-tears, these Aussie battlers are about to see their dream become reality

Words: Andrew Chesterton Photography: Daniel Linnet & Mark Barber

“ It’s a sleek, swoopy piece of hopeful engineering – a car that could only be conceived in the twisted minds of enthusiasts”

Spartan supercar

LIKE MOST DREAMS, IT started small. Two dog-eared posters carefully stuck to the bedroom wall of a young petrol head, and a question

so blindingly obvious it could only have been asked by a 12 year old.

One picture was of the sublime Lamborghini Countach – the swimsuit-clad Bo Derek poster for car nuts – its scissor doors open and stretched towards the sky. The other was of a Ducati 750 SuperSport; a legend in its day, and a bike with a true racing pedigree, capable of supercar-worrying acceleration. One was the ultimate example of Italian design bravura, a car considered by many to be the sexiest of all-time. The other… well, another ultimate example of Italian bravura, only lighter, faster and slightly more frightening.

And the question? Why doesn’t someone just combine the two? Wouldn’t that be cool? It might have taken them the best part of four decades, but 47-year-old Peter Papanicolaou and his twin brother Nick can finally answer that question. It’s a yes. Very cool.

“My brother and I are probably the biggest car nuts in the world,” Peter says. “Ever since I was 12 years old, I’ve dreamed of Countaches and Ducatis. Our walls were covered in sports cars and bikes, but the Countach was our ultimate supercar. It took pride of place on the wall.

“I guess that’s where it all started. I’ve had this idea for about 20 years now. But then we got married, had kids and, of course, other things take priority. But then we had an opportunity to build this, and we jumped at it.”

Meet the Spartan V (of “Madness? This is SPARTA!” fame; the boys reckon they’re descended from those mad Greek warriors, apparently you can tell by their abs), a soon-to-be track car, and a shining example of what’s possible when two blokes set out to create something amazing in a shed. It’s a sleek, swoopy piece of hopeful engineering – a car that could only be conceived in the twisted minds of true enthusiasts. A major car maker would never have the courage to create a body as lusciously mental as this.

It’s powered by a Ducati engine ripped out of a 1198S (a bike Peter bought for a little over $25K, rode the 11km to his house, then tore into scraps) good for 130kW. The high-revving engine is paired with the motorbike’s gearbox through a simple sequential shift, back for first, forward for the next five cogs. Carbon-fibre seats have been fitted to keep weight down to 350kg, nearly the same as the Fat Cravat from MasterChef. That adds up to 371kW per tonne. Lamborghini’s Aventador has just 327kw per tonne. That’s scary.

JUNE 2011 / TOPGEAR.COM / 93

The Spartan’s also got fully adjustable shock absorbers, a quick-release steering wheel, custom exhaust and radiator and a MicroTech onboard computer. And some holes in the floor.

The tyres? Nobody knows. They’ve got three different compounds to test on the track, but what’s going to work on a car that weighs the same as a sneezed-in hankie remains a mystery. They’ve started with the same Yokohoma rubber found on the Lotus Elise, but the manufacturer fears the Spartan will be too light to properly warm the tyres. Custom, and expensive, rubber looms large in this track car’s future.

The eventual plan is for the brothers to build 300 Spartan Vs (the 300, geddit?) to sell as track cars. The finished products are expected to sell for around $90K, and Peter reckons he’s already had genuine interest from about 30 people.

“When I bought that Ducati, then stripped it, it was like sacrilege for a bike nut like me,” he says. “It was like buying a 458 Italia, taking it home and putting the engine in a Corolla. I thought ‘what the hell am I doing?’

But I knew then that this was getting serious.”With the purchase of the engine, the Spartan V

had entered its first trimester. But what would follow wasn’t the usual nine months of general discomfort followed by a burst of pain. This was all pain, all the time. Five years of it.

But first, a little history. Peter was rapidly approaching the generally agreed halfway point of his stint on Earth, and decided it was time for a treat. Like many men his age, he chose a sports car as his quick-fix of choice. A Porsche 911, to be exact. But having ridden motorbikes for most of his adult life, he found the cars on offer something of a disappointment.

“I decided new cars just didn’t interest me. They were too clinical, and they had no flair,” he says. “So I decided I could either buy the Porsche, or I could build this. I wanted something with soul, with engine noise, with feeling. Something I could drive just for the pure enjoyment of it.

“The thing is, I knew I could design it, but I didn’t really have the time to build it, so that’s where my brother came in.”


“It has the same torque-to-weight ratio as

a Veyron SS. Right, now we’ve got your attention”

Red, wide, exaggerated nose… hang on, is that

Julia Gillard?

“We can rebuild him”

Spartan supercar


Stig: stuck in the matrix

“And this is where interrogations

take place”

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And so, in the words of every reality TV show ever, the journey began. It’s a story with more downs than ups, and a project that has all but consumed the lives of the brothers. They’ve had no breaks, no holidays, and barely seen their families, or sunlight, in five years.

But the pay-off is shiny and sleek, painted bright red and sitting in an unassuming backyard shed at Nick’s house in Sydney’s Inner West.

And I mean unassuming. It looks like rats may have gnawed at the walls quite recently, and it’s not much bigger than the car itself. You also can’t help but notice the distinct lack of tools – this is no Jay Leno garage. It looks, presumably, just like your back shed. The air is stale, and space is so limited the boys have to embark on an Austin Powers-style 57-point turn to move the car around. Two men, working in here, for five years… how did they not kill each other? It’s an unsolved mystery.

The project’s been the hardest on Nick. And the strain of the heavy workload appears to have taken its toll. Both brothers look exhausted, particularly after three sleepless nights in a row, trying, and failing, to get the car ready for our photoshoot, but Nick appears on the verge of physical and mental collapse. The 47 year old has been balancing working nightshift as an engineer, and his days cooped up in the increasingly stifling shed. And all while trying to find time to see his family, including his two-year-old daughter, who was only six months old when the project really started to heat up.

“From the beginning until now, it’s been five years. But the last 18 months have been

a nightmare,” Nick says. “The body alone, getting it ready to plug a mould off it, has taken me about 600 hours.

“I work nights, and spend most of my days here. It’s been very hard on the family. Fortunately, I have a very understanding wife.

“It was hard when we first started, because they couldn’t see the finish line, but once the car started taking shape, and they could see it, they actually started telling me to get in the garage.

“But we’re all desperate to see the end now. Some days it’s only a couple of hours, but on others, I’m there in the shed for six or eight hours at least. I have a lot of making up to do with my family.”

So the car, then. The brothers started with the design, deciding the look of it was just as important as its eventual dynamics. Peter claims the credit for most of the design, while Nick was tasked with making it work. The brothers remember sitting on the floor of their living room, surrounded by sketching pads and the tubes that would eventually form the chassis. Nick was looking flustered and found himself privately wondering how they could possibly make it work.

Enter Nick’s then 16-year-old son, Nicholas junior, who took pity on his father and mentioned that he’d just finished studying a rudimentary CAD (Computer Aided Design) program called Google SketchUp at school, and

“Two men, working in a back shed, for five years… how did they not kill

each other? It’s an unsolved mystery”

Spartan supercar


that perhaps he could help out with the engineering of the chassis.

Nick Jnr picks up the story: “I was just learning about SketchUp at school, then one day I came home and saw Dad surrounded by tubes, trying to sketch out a car on paper,” he says. “I thought I could probably do it on the computer, so I did one tube. It just grew from there. We started throwing things together, it was like dynamite. This explosion of work just happened, and when it came to actually putting the car together, everything just fit perfectly.”

But like everything on this project, even the seemingly easy bits weren’t without problems. They took the CAD drawings and the tubes off to be laser cut. Then the laser broke. The remaining tubes had to be cut by hand, an arduous, soul-destroying task.

“We’ve had such a long list of problems and setbacks. It’s been unbelievable,” Peter says. “But the real thing that slowed us down was the money. We’ve done this all with our own cash. But you can’t throw in the towel. Once you’ve started, you can’t stop. You’ve just got to see it through.

“Would I do it again? Absolutely not. I could have had a lot more relaxation time. I could have gone on a couple of holidays. But this is a passion. And look at what we’ve created.

“It’s cost a little over $100K, but there’s a couple of hundred grand in man hours there. Our lives stopped for a year and a half.”

So, was it worth it? The pain, the heartache, the setbacks, the constantly ballooning expenses – will all that hardship be rewarded when the Spartan V hits a track for the first time?

“Of course it’s worth it. The Spartan will be like a mini Ferrari, but even better, because of the sound of the Ducati,” Peter says, his eyes shining with excitement. “There’s just nothing better. And with the engine right behind your head, you won’t just hear it, you’ll feel it.”

So how does it drive? It doesn’t. Not yet, but we’ll let you know. Given that a wheel fell off while we were moving it to take these very photos (we’d actually planned for the photo shoot to take place in a studio, but after working around the clock to finish the car, the boys discovered they couldn’t actually get it onto a trailer), we feel the four-week time frame for track testing is a little optimistic.

But we’ve got no doubt that they’ll get it done. There’s been too much time, money and heartbreak dedicated to the Spartan V for the boys to give up now. And we happen to know a bloke called Stig who quite fancies a drive.

USSIE SHEDS AREN’T JUST for hiding in during periods of spousal

unpleasantness. They are a place a bloke, or woman for that matter, can tinker and make stuff. Some of us make birdhouses so crap that pigeons laugh, but others boldly create their own machines.

Australia has a fine tradition of blokes making cars in their backyards and selling them to the world. But less of them are made these days because our design rules are about the toughest in the world. It’s a bit different to England where it is okay for a Limey to register an office chair, as long as it has wheels.

With automotive tech advancing so fast, it is also getting harder to make a competitive car out the back with an oxy welder and a wrench.

The availability of fibreglass from the 1950s encouraged blokes in sheds because it provided a solution

to the problem of making a metal body. Some blokes started from scratch, others took the basics of an existing one and redesigned it.

Take one of the most popular shed cars, the Purvis Eureka, which looked to the untrained eye like a Corvette, and went into production in 1974. The horn exterior was a fibreglass shell dropped on top of a VW Beetle chassis, and it ran the air-cooled engine from the same car. For those who wanted performance, there was the Perentti, which was based on a Holden chassis and ran Holden engines (a six or V8). It looked even more like a Corvette.

The 1969 Bolwell Nagari was another tasty homemade car, with its own chassis, a Ford V8 and kerb weight of less than 1000kg.

One of the most successful shed productions of recent years is Queensland’s Skelta G-Force, which is ugly, but also very fast. It finished second in the 2010 Targa Tasmania to a Lambo Gallardo. Not bad at all.James Stanford

Backyard bangers: rating the Australian hits

A

Looking back at some of the nation’s favourite homemade heroes

Skelta G-Force: comes with built-in

bookshelves

Bolwell Nagari: made with the assistance of very dark sunnies


topgear.comWatch the Spartan supercar

come to life in an exclusive

behind-the-scenes video!

Spartan supercar

“Would we do this again? Absolutely not.

I could have had a more relaxing life. I could have had holidays”


TOPGEAR GIVES YOU WINGS LIGHT SPEED

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