The from builders of the Zenvo
The Danes are always good for a surprise. Let us recall the year 1992, when the Danish soccer team took the place of a disqualified Yugoslavia and went on to win the European Football Championship. The slogan chanted by the Danish fans… ‘We are red, we are white, we are Danish dynamite!’. Well Danish dynamite is something Jesper Hermann, Christian Brandt and Torben Hartvig are well familiar with… since 2009 their Zenvo ST1 has commanded respect and admiration, a 1,100 horsepower and highly exclusive sports car which was developed with the three Danes playing key roles. Now with their own firm, HBH, they have a new project… the Bulldog GT, a mid-motored Gran Turismo on the basis of a V12 Vantage.
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- HBH have fitted two compressors to the six-litre V12 of the Aston Martin V12 Vantage, producing 675 horsepower where there was formerly 517 and 756 Nm of torque instead of 570.
More modest but big enough
In comparison to the Zenvo the new car will be somewhat more modest although nobody could call the Bulldog GT under-powered. HBH have fitted two compressors to the six-litre V12 of the Aston Martin V12 Vantage, producing 675 horsepower where there was formerly 517 and 756 Nm of torque instead of 570. Compared to the original the Bulldog GT is faster in the rush to a hundred… in 3.9 rather than 4.2 seconds… although it tops out a bit sooner… at 300 rather than 305 kilometres an hour. But the most spectacular aspect of the Bulldog is that the motor has been moved from the front of the car to be positioned behind the driver.
From front to back
In the Aston Martin the power plant is forward with the front axle… in the Bulldog GT both motor and the manual six-speed transmission find their place mid-ships. The aluminium carosserie is completely new and reveals the motorization architecture at the very first glance, even if there remain hints of the car's British origins. The silhouette is that of a typical mid-motor sports car… short bonnet, cockpit close to the front of the car and a long rear section with huge air intakes on the sides to feed the air to the deep-breathing compressors of the V12. The big wheel arches are filled by large wheels… at the front 9.5x19 inch with 255/35 rubber and at the back 12.5x20 sized with rubber in 335/30 format. Carbon ceramic brakes are on board with six-piston calipers griping the 398 discs at the front and four-piston saddles on 360 millimetre discs at the rear.
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- The aluminium carosserie is completely new and has a short bonnet, cockpit close to the front of the car and a long rear section with huge air intakes on the sides.
As close to the original as possible
The Danes have certainly not hesitated to take on a formidable challenge… instead of starting with a blank sheet of paper to commence the design and development process Hermann, Brandt and Hartvig chose to work within the styling and technology specifications of Aston Martin. Unusual, to be sure… in spite of radically modifying the powertrain they decided not to build a new chassis but were content to adapt that of the original V12 Vantage.
Now HBH have commenced the production of a prototype which should be ready for initial testing at the beginning of 2013. When or whether there will be a limited series of the Bulldog GT built or if it will remain a one-off for a very solvent customer is not known. But that the Danes have shown themselves capable of shooting from anonymity to renown is nothing new… we recall the European Football Championships of 1992… Denmark 2, Germany 0.
