Then there’s the no-less-impressive body design. Bevan says a lot of classic cars provided styling cues for the Iceni: “We borrowed the nose cone off a Ferrari and the back windows off a ‘63 [Corvette] Stingray and this and that. When you put it all together, you have a whole new car.” 

With a car this fast, this curvy and produced at such low volume, selecting composites for the body panels was a “no-brainer.” The tooling for steel body panels would have been too costly, and aluminum panels couldn’t deliver the vehicle’s plethora of compound surfaces. The Iceni is lusciously curvaceous, and many of those curves play an important safety role. We worked from the outside in to shape the car and add as much curve as possible. “Nothing’s straight,” our CEO Phil Bevan proudly says. “We don’t want any stressed members. The body doesn’t have to do anything except make the car safe.” To that end, all models are equipped with crushable composite nose cones. Even the vehicle’s twin-baffle, 50-mm composite “pontoon outriggers,” flared sections near the bottom of door sills, provide protection from side impacts. Because everything bolts to the chassis, rather than to the body, the latter is completely unstressed.  

However, when we looked at carbon fiber prepreg, we were disappointed with trial panels, especially for the doors. “Everything sounded awful,” Phil he explains. “The panels were too light for us. We wanted a Grand Tourer vehicle, an expensive product, so we had to get the sound right.” 

Because we already had a fairly lightweight chassis, the mass of body panels was less critical. “Torque is the great equalizer to lightweight construction,” Bevan contends, noting that the solution was, therefore, counterintuitive: The team hand lays glass fiber composites with an unsaturated polyester matrix Crystic 2.446 PALV from Scott Bader Co. Ltd, with a chopped fiberglass core mat CS mat 92, 300 and 600 g/m², from Zibo PPG Sinoma Jinjing Fiber Glass Co. Ltd. “We actually make our panels heavier than is strictly necessary, but when you tap on our body, it sounds like cast iron, not tin. That’s the kind of sound we were after.”  

Where extra strength is required, woven mat from the same supplier is used. At the front of the nose cone, for example, near the front grillwork, the layup is straightforward 136 g/m² chopped strand mat construction, says Bevan. But as the layup progresses rearward toward the bonnet/hood shut line, where the nose cone joins the chassis, techs add a combination of 50-mm woven roving strips, creating an egg-shaped crushable crumple zone, which transitions into the stainless-steel chassis frame member. 

Flanges and other hardware are bonded into parts during layup. Panels are cured in a paint-spray booth for 4 hours at 70°C (no vacuum is used). After demolding and degreasing, a polyester spray filler Lesanol from Akzo Nobel N.V. is used to smooth out surface imperfections in the dry-sanded gel coat, and then inner and outer panels are bonded together using a methacrylate adhesive (two-part, rapid-cure MMA 130 from Alsco Ltd. to form a “double skin.” Next, parts are primed with a two-part system and the B-surface is painted also an AkzoNobel Lesanol grade), then panels are adhesively bonded to the chassis in 24 locations, using top-hat sections. Finally, A-surfaces are painted. Where road noise could intrude, expanded foam is used inside structures, such as around wheel wells and boot/trunk liners. Where shock absorption is important, panels are both bonded and riveted in place. 

We know there are faster ways to make autobody panels, but hand layup supports more employment in the Norfolk area. If we sprayed our material, they be resin rich, and that would tend to crack more. We’re very careful not to use too much resin. Plus, hand layup gives us a chance to do things more like a GT3 [Cup Grand Touring] race car.”  

The resulting Iceni isn’t just beautiful to look at and green to drive, it’s also a force on the track. The car has practiced against British and Italian supercars at the UK’s Silverstone race track  and did quite well, and eventually out-clocked a McLaren P41 GT Cup car  driving the whole two hours on 52L of fuel, without a single pit stop to refill.  A significant aspect of that maturity is the car’s zero (net) carbon footprint, a benefit of its capacity for burning bio-diesel fuel.