Nissan Delta Wing Commission
Once again Andy has blown peoples minds with a project built in a ridiculously short time frame. Andy was commissioned by Top Gear magazine in conjunction with Nissan UK to build a drivable copy of the real Nissan Delta Wing race car unveiled at the prestigious Le Mans 24 hour race in France June 2012. The concept of the Delta Wing stretching every boundary in the race car rule book. Nissan saw Le Mans as an ideal opportunity for extra publicity by having another Delta Wing driving around the whole Le Mans site throughout the weekend.
The person they called on, because of his expert knowledge and speed of build, was Andy. From when the commission was signed to the day the car would have to be on the ferry gave Andy just 39 days ! A task most would have thought impossible but Andy and his faithful engineer Jim Chalmers set off with two magic wands and a welder and created what you see here.
Nissan did not give any information, details or blueprints to Andy, this car was built with just 5 low res pictures taken off the internet as any kind of reference.
The car was delivered to Le Mans the day before the race and spent the whole time absolutely surrounded by people sometimes 20 deep in numbers. It was an astounding success in everyway possible. The Top Gear website featured updated build up pictures regularly which in 4 weeks accumulated 4 million hits to their site.
On the Sunday morning press call at Le Mans Andy’s Delta Wing was called for and was the attention of every motor journalist there, having literally thousands of pictures taken in just minutes and the most wonderful thing was that all three drivers of the real race car wanted to have their photos taken with it, as did the Ben Bowlby the designer of the original race car who had a photo call with Andy himself at the wheel. Michael Krumm the German driver actually mistook it for their race car which is, in our book, a compliment of the highest level...
Andy’s Delta Wing with the race car drivers Sotoshi Motoyama, Marino Franchitti at the wheel and Michael Krumm.
Andy’s Delta Wing on its return to England has just done a photoshoot for Top Gear magazine...
The Images below show the stages of the build of the car
