RML Short Wheelbase review: gorgeous £1.6m V12 tribute act tested

What do we have here?

This is the RML Short Wheelbase, a homage to the Ferrari 250 SWB built by British motorsport royalty – RML. Each starts life as a Ferrari 550 Maranello, which is then stripped down and the 5.5-litre naturally aspirated V12, six-speed manual gearbox, bits of the electrical architecture and a central chunk of the chassis are kept and recommissioned to recover any lost horses. All the engines are now producing the full 485bhp, as the factory intended.

Around that they fit a clamshell carbon tub for maximum rigidity and a kerbweight just north of 1,500kg, 150kg less than the 550. It can be worked on by your friendly local Ferrari expert, and everything from oil filters to off-the-shelf tyres have been kept as simple and serviceable as possible.

When did you drive it? Doesn’t look like Milton Keynes…

Car-plus-place doesn’t click any better than this: a wildly expensive Ferrari 250 SWB homage and a morning to ourselves on the Monterey Peninsula, the surreally beautiful golfing mecca that attracts the mega rich like flies to a BBQ. Round these ways residents don’t see prices (like the £1.6m RML is asking for one of these) like we do - they see an object they want, or they don’t.

Which is good and bad news for RML because we can sweep that price under the carpet for now (especially when you factor in original Ferrari 250 SWBs fetch anywhere between £8m to £15m, there’s an argument it’s actually the bargain of the century) but when you’re competing for the attention of billionaires, the quality and execution needs to be absolutely off-the-charts.

Well, is it?

More on that in a bit, but I should note that the car we’re driving is the verification prototype, the car that RML will keep forever, and the one that’s midway through durability testing, so the interior finishes aren’t final. But the exterior styling, the way it drives and sounds… that’s all there. Only 30 customer cars will be made, with the first three currently in build.

Why would a company famous for building race cars embark on something like this? 

As luck would have it I’m standing having a cup of tea with the only man who can adequately answer that - Michael Mallock, son of Ray and his successor as CEO of the RML Group: “RML was started by my father in 1984, purely as a motorsport business. But the Mallock name goes back to the 1930s, when my grandfather was building specials. In the last seven years since I took over, we’ve gone from being very motorsport focused to it being only about 15 per cent of our revenue.”

Michael’s CV is already dense: Aston Martin continuation cars, McLaren’s Senna GTR and the ‘Ring shattering NIO EP9 are all on there, as are British Touring cars and Lotus’ new Emira GT4. “So we're quite diverse in what we do, but a few years ago, I decided instead of just doing things for other people, it was time we did something for ourselves.”

First came a 1,000bhp, front-engined hypercar which got “pretty far down the line,” before Michael realised “this isn’t what I want to do, I don’t want to go 140mph on a B-road to feel like I’m going fast.” So he dialled it right back, looked to the “golden age of motoring” with stuff like the Aston DB4 GT, Jaguar XK120 and the Ferrari 250 SWB, a car he’s always admired but being a big chap, could never fit in. He also wanted something that could be reliably thrashed and with mod-cons like Apple CarPlay, air-con and a reversing camera. 

Fancy. Do any of them work?

I can confirm it has all these things, and they function properly, and as it rolls out of the garage it looks properly, knee-tremblingly beautiful from most angles, but not all. Front three-quarter and profile? Hubba hubba. From the back, the taillights look a little aftermarket and remind me of the David Brown Speedback GT (not in a good way), plus proper wire-wheels wouldn’t go amiss.

On the inside too, there’s much to like. Not least the gorgeous thin rimmed wheel, the open-gate manual just begging to be clicked and clacked, and all that plush tan leather. I love the simplicity of the dials and switches all in a row, but the final detail is still to come; the stuff that elevates components to jewellery and helps to justify astronomical prices. The stuff that Singer does so incredibly well.

What’s it like to drive?

On the move it’s a triumph, sitting confidently in that pocket between flubbery classic and granite stiff modern supercar. There’s some squidge in other words, enough to let it flow at higher speeds and feel alive even when you’re bimbling along. All the touchpoints are pure delight: the crisp throttle response, the spindly wheel wriggling around in your hands, the feel of metal-on-metal every time you change gear and give it a blip just for the hell of it.

It is a throwback to a simpler time, when driver engagement took precedence over outright speed, but seen through the lens of modern technology. The brakes work in other words, it starts on the button, it feels solid and capable of weathering some abuse. The engine is a nape-prickling feast of howling revs and all the urgency you could ever need. Remind me again why any road car requires more than 500bhp?

A success then?

It's bold and brilliant the RML SWB and delivers emphatically on the CEO’s brief to “celebrate the engagement of driving”. My worry is that a large portion of the magic comes from an inspired choice of donor powertrain and the design and finish around that – the stuff that needs to be transcendent to play at this level – is highly evocative, but still has a way to go.

What’s not in doubt is the passion that’s been poured into this project by Michael and his team: “It's been very emotional. I've done a few miles on the road in the UK, but it's not homologated yet. Most of my driving has been at Millbrook on the hill route, so driving it around here in traffic, up and down 17-Mile drive, parking in Carmel... the response has been mega. I've just been driving around with the biggest smile on my face.”