David/Andy and Team - Congratulations on your award at SEMA, the team here at GlobalWorkshop are super stoked for you winning. We can imagine being a featured UK company at SEMA must be something special, we saw your reaction, and hopefully you've had some sleep since! Having got to know you we must say, we almost teared up for you watching you win the Fan Favourite Trim Award! We'd like to help tell the world about your epic McLaren SLR HDK build.

Thank you for your kind words guys, we are still all recovering!

For those that don't know, what's an SLR HDK?

The factory SLR was a jointly developed McLaren & Mercedes-Benz built vehicle back in the early 2000’s when Mercedes owned 40% of McLaren Group and supplied the engines for the Formula 1 team. Only 2157 base spec models were ever manufactured at the hefty price of £300,000 each! Our 2005 road-going model is based on the super-rare track-only version of the SLR 722 GT, of which there were only 22 ever produced. The 722 GT model was only ever available to the North American market and a track vehicle only.

If this didn’t make our vehicle unique enough, ours has been fitted with an ultra rare HDK – High Downforce Kit, created for bespoke cars at McLaren’s Special Operations facility, of which only 12 will be built, but this is the only one that will feature and exposed carbon fibre body. It is fully unique, full custom interior, custom side grilles, GT inspired rear diffuser, louvers, single-exit side exhausts with less baffling, which sound PHENOMENAL and now the 5.4 AMG Supercharged V8 runs 793BHP making it capable of a 217mph top speed!

And d:class?

d:class automotive Ltd are an award-winning, high-end Classic and Supercar Automotive Trimshop in the countryside of Surrey. Established in 2005 by founder and Director, David Price, who started off as an young trimmer of modern and classic Mercedes interiors, to a team of 14, now serving various Supercar Manufacturers, Hypercar specialists, Classic Car enthusiasts and Motorsport Teams, including Formula 1. Most of our daily work is under the umbrella of secret Non-Disclosure Agreements, so this SLR HDK was a rare opportunity to showcase to the world what d:class automotive can do for your own project.

Tell us, how did you happen to come across someone who would let you run free?

This project was brought to us by Oliver Ashley of @xlusso, we cater for many of his clients and this particular client has always allowed us to create outlandish interiors for him. We have previously built him a fully-working Batmobile and a custom Jaguar XJ220.

How did you come up with such a wild concept? Any inspiration you drew from?

For this unique SLR HDK we have taken inspiration from the original GT cars which were trimmed in a traditional Mercedes tartan fabric with HDK body styling. Of course all these years later, we wanted to push the boundaries of what could be achieved with modern techniques and what areas could be improved upon nearly 20 years later.

Lasered Alcantara, now those two words not many people would expect to hear together, can you please tell us what that is?

Priding ourselves on pushing the boundaries of automotive trim, we were keen to see if we could honour the original GT tartan, but with a hugely modern twist, comprising of lasering the tartan definition on genuine McLaren Alcantara at varying grades to give an authentic, highly detailed look. We also added incredibly intricate laser etched SLR HDK silhouettes, McLaren Speedmarks and Airbag logo’s in to the head rests, dash panels and even the steering wheel centre band to once again highlight that extra level of detail in our craft.

What was the hardest thing about build?

The hardest thing about this build really was the timescales, both ourselves and MSO were up against it where the sign off for the spec wasn’t agreed until June and the vehicle had to be on a plane mid-October! We handle tight timescales with ease here thanks to the likes of Global Workshop helping with the day-to-day running of the projects, but we wanted to go that extra mile in to unchartered territory with the lasered details. We worked closely with our good friends at Formation Industries for many, many hours trialling different lasering techniques to ensure the stretchiness of the Alcantara wasn’t compromised by the burning of the top surface of the material – all technical stuff!

How long from concept to getting it to the show? Can you give us an indication of the hours involved?

This SLR was one of the many “renders to reality” that we have created in recent years (See attached for our hi-res renders!) The renders were created in May, signed off in June and the build continued in the background at MSO from there on. We personally had 39 days to complete all our works which we smashed out due to the excitement of SEMA! In total there were approximately 1500 hours in the build as it is a complete restoration, 330 man hours were in the interior and approximately 1170 in the mechanicals and paintwork.

What's the thing you're most proud of?

Resilience. With this project the team pulled together from the get-go and we managed to complete the full interior ahead of schedule, but nothing could have prepared us for the shell shock of having the customer fail with the funds in the eleventh hour, just before payment was due on the vehicle and the flights to the U.S! David showed incredible resilience when faced with the task of finding an alternative. We had hoped that we could borrow one of the three amazing Supercars we had on show at the Wynn Concours as a temporary filler, but SEMA made it clear that if we did not turn up with Project Volcano, it wouldn't do well for our reputation. This led to David sourcing the funds within 24 hours and buying the SLR outright – a ballsy move that allowed us to keep our promises to all involved and to show SEMA what we are made of – true resilience!

Anyone you'd like to give a shout out to?

Special Thanks to all our team at: Interior: d:class automotive ltd - @dclassauto

Laser Etching: Formation Industries - @formation_industries

Body & Paint: MSO - Special Operations

Vehicle Sourcing: Xlusso - @xlusso

Advisors: JH Restorations - @jh_restorations

Now getting across to SEMA must have been the undertaking, could you tell us what was involved?

Being accepted in to SEMA is no small task. We were fortunate enough to be invited on to the ARMO stand (Automotive Restoration Market Organisation) but this then led to the task of transporting a vehicle from the UK to the USA. Trust us, if you have the time to plan – take the shipping route! It is longer but 5x cheaper than flying a vehicle out there 😊

You won fan favourite award, tell us what that was like?

The video of the moment David finds out we have won will stick with us for years! We had just found out that we weren’t in the top 3 of our Sports Coupe & Luxury category so all the team were feeling a bit empty after such a long journey just to get the SLR HDK to SEMA and then this emptiness is swiftly turned upside down with the amazing news of picking up the Fan’s Favourite Interior Award! This was literally the icing on the cake for such a whirlwind journey that we were all a party of!

Anything else you'd like to tell us?

We’d like to thank you guys and everyone who has supported us throughout this! Its been a wild adventure and we are very fortunate to have a hard-working team and supportive network of followers around us! As the SLR won an award it is now automatically entered in to the next round of U.S competition hosted at the prestigious Barrett Jackson event in Arizona in January! So the story is far from over…

You can see more about it here in their YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/dclassTV They also have a range of limited edition SEMA wear available from their shop to celebrate the win: https://www.dclassautoshop.co.uk/shop-4

GlobalWorkshop is extremely proud to have d:Class as a client, you can view a case study about them here: https://www.globalworkshop.com/case_studies/d_class

We wish d:class all the success, and looking forward to the next chapter of Project Volcano

Rowan Hick
Founder, GlobalWorkshop