THE MOTUL CAR: MEET THE GBS ZERO POWERED BY MOTUL

An ambitious project to create a Motul car from scratch is well underway. Great British Sports Cars (GBS) is building a Zero that uses Motul lubricants throughout its entire build process. To find out more, we spoke to Richard Hall, one of GBS’ co-founders.

We're a niche car manufacturer in the UK, making Lotus Seven-style cars. We started the company in 2007. We've taken a different route than most in that we're more engineering focused and design and manufacture the entire car on site. From chassis fabrication, profile cutting, CNC machining, to making our own calipers, sumps, engine components, throttle bodies etc. It’s given us a greater level of detail and performance with the car.

Mainly the UK. The American market is growing as well. We also sell a bit into Europe, and we have a car going to Chile at the minute. But we're pushing the UK and the US more. Europe is a tricky market for us.

We've been with Motul and its UK distributor Witham now for about six or seven years. It started from a conversation about building a car using Motul fluids. So not just in the finished car but throughout the whole manufacturing process. For instance, we’ll use Motul fluids in the chop saw for cutting the steel, the milling machine making a brake caliper, the CNC machine and so on. It truly is Motul made. And then obviously we’ll use Motul products in the finished car.

The car is due back from the paint shop soon, where it’s been painted in a Motul livery. It’s a really nice spec car with lots of Motul details all over it. The engine is being built by Neil brown Engineering, who makes the engines for BTCC and uses Motul oils. So, all the bits are coming together, and fingers crossed we’ll be on track for the car’s debut at The Classic in Silverstone.

I really don’t know at this stage. It might be the first of a series of Motul cars. Or we might raffle it off in a competition.

At GBS, we want to be seen as the leaders in what we’re doing and making the best cars. And Motul is world-renowned for making the best fluids in motorsport and on the road. So, it was a really nice synergy between the two companies. We stock Motul and put it in all our cars and recommend it to our customers. But we have to educate our customers. Many don’t understand the importance of fluids, but once they see the benefits, it’s a no-brainer. Ourselves included. When we first started the CNC machining, we were using a general cutting fluid, but when we switched to the high-performance Motul products, the difference was dramatic.