BMW V12 System

Having witnessed all sorts of poorly fitting, noisy, rusty, rattling exhausts in our travels, it was clear from early on that no-one had produced an item that we would be happy to use on our vehicles. Most home-made (and even some factory) kitcar exhausts were poor at best and downright dangerous at worst. Quality of construction was generally very bad, with various bits of pipe in all manner of bore sizes, welded together badly.

Our exhaust system is one item that we are particularly proud of. When it became apparant that we needed to be able to supply an off the shelf part for our replica we decided to make it one of the most heavily researched items on the car. There were three main reasons for this. Firstly, the sound output had to be 'right'. It was no good producing a car of this nature that rattled and hummed it's way down the highway. Secondly, quality of construction needed to be high. A rusting, leaking exhaust would have no place on our cars. Thirdly, it had to look good. The tailpipe outlets had to appear original, which means being in the right place, of the same size and shape and obviously the same number of them; four in total. We turned for help from someone who had countless hours of experience in building exhausts- none other than the gentleman responsible for building the road-going McLaren F1 exhaust.

The sound output was the hardest to get right. Endless hours spent testing different lengths of pipe, various quantities of silencers and it's accompanying routing was nothing short of a major task. However, practice makes perfect and we were eventually made happy by an exhaust that we feel is as aurally pleasureable as a Rover V8 can sound. No less than 26 feet of tubing and 4 silencers is involved, split equally between each bank of cylinders. No mean feat considering the limited space available.

There was only ever going to be one option for the construction of the exhaust: stainless steel. We use the highest grade available and have kept the amount of joints to a minimum. All joints are of the sleeve type for easy installation/alignment and stainless steel exhaust clamps are used to hold all the sections securely together. Combined with the mounting brackets already welded to the chassis (if you have chosen our chassis bracket upgrade), fitting the exhaust is simple and quick. A far cry from the usual hassle of bending up brackets, pipes and trying to rectify an abundance of leaks that plagued kitcars of days gone past.

Finally, looks were all-important. Constructing the complete manifold and system from stainless meant that it would always look good under the engine cover but it had to look right externally too. After much searching, we managed to find some stainless tailpipe trims which are visually identical to the original. Used in conjunction with the 4-outlet design (all of which are in the correct place) or the 2 large round pipes we sourced for the GTR, the finished article is one we are finally extremely happy with.