How to build and buy RML’s new 900bhp, £540k monster

It all starts here with the P39, an untouchably exclusive, carbonfibre-bodied reworking of the Porsche 911 Turbo S, one that promises to outpace a GT3 RS on the track while remaining as usable in the real world as any factory-fresh supercar.

As the second model from RML’s nascent Bespoke division, it is designed with influence from the legendary 911 GT1. Its blown flat-six engine has been tickled by Litchfield to produce almost as much power as a Bugatti Veyron, the bespoke bodywork and active aero generate up to 930kg of downforce and it costs £540,000 plus the cost of your donor car.

Like the Ferrari 250 GTO-inspired Short Wheelbase from a few years back, the P39 has been conceived both as a revenue generator and a technical tour de force that showcases RML’s awesome engineering might, which for so long has been hidden under a bushel by the outfit’s positioning as a white-label engineering and design partner to big-name OEMs.

“The whole point of the Bespoke division,” says Dickinson, “is for us to come out of the shadows and demonstrate in the consumer world: here are our products, here is our engineering quality, here is our skill, here is our attention to detail, here is all of our motorsport heritage – applied to something relevant to you.”

Then the idea is that the commercial success of these Bespoke products will help to grow the core engineering consultancy business. He adds: “Each time we have a successful product, that reflects back on the wider RML brand.”

So these creations must be not only unfathomably capable but also, crucially, achingly desirable – and doubly so in the face of intense competition from the bespoke divisions of the luxury car makers themselves. And the key to that, as demonstrated by the monstrous profit figures generated by the likes of Rolls-Royce Bespoke and Lamborghini’s Ad Personam, is exclusivity and personalisation.

It is here that Dickinson’s experience in resurrecting Bentley’s Mulliner as a coachbuilder for the new age comes into play. “That really helped me understand how the bespoke market works,” he says. “Mulliner is the pinnacle, but it showcases the rest of Bentley’s skills.

"When you brought a customer in to devise their own spec, they realised just how impressive a Bentley is before you even Mulliner-ise it.”

While each of the P39s will be identical in a technical sense, then, down to the bespoke suspension links, driver-adjustable aero, 100mm widened track and 25mm lengthened wheelbase, the rest of the specification is completely at the discretion of the owner.

“Customers really appreciate uniqueness,” says Dickinson. “There are some very wealthy people in the world, but they don’t just spend money for the sake of it. They are very focused on value for money."

Dickinson theorises that the experience is sometimes as important as the end product, which helps to explain why RML has invested so heavily in ensuring that the process of personalising a P39 will be truly special.

When we visit, the customisation suite is still a work in progress, but already it is apparent that this will be a quite agreeable place for the 39 well-heeled owners to spend a few hours.

Cabinets are topped with reams of strokable material swatches and paint sample cards to agonise over, before you have a play with the shift paddles and test out the various options for the door pulls.

There’s also a VR headset on hand so you can walk around a life-size digital version of your car. It allows you to see how different colours and materials change according to lighting, and you can get as comfortable with your spec as possible before pulling the trigger.

I’m excited to give it a go but, allowed such dizzying freedom of expression and a hypothetical bottomless pit of money to spend on options, I find myself racked by a paralysing sense of indecision.

Whiling away your lunch break on a configurator can be a relaxing exercise in escapism but, even allowing for the fact that it’s all imaginary, speccing a P39 – with the boss at your side and the production line over your shoulder – feels rather more daunting.

I want to do justice to RML’s lovingly engineered creation and honour its performance potential by not going ‘full Knightsbridge’ with my virtual supercar, but this is a drop-dead silhouette that begs for some lurid adornment.

So Autocar’s P39 is – appropriately – bright yellow. More particularly, it’s a shade that’s inspired by the legendary Ruf CTR ‘Yellowbird’, another 911-based monster that has claimed its fair share of scalps at the Nordschleife.

I don’t want the interior to be so overtly decorated, but playing it safe with black feels like a missed opportunity. So I split the difference with a tasteful tan and choose a suitably technical wheel design that befits the engineering-led approach to the P39’s design.

Were we ordering one of the first 10 cars, our example would have come with a special ‘RML 40th anniversary’ trim package, complete with bespoke badging, embroidery and subtle red detailing – the precise hue of which has been the source of considerable debate among its makers.

Michael Mallock, son of founder Ray Mallock and now head of the Bespoke division, says that, irrespective of the colour and trim chosen, all 39 owners of the P39 can be sure they have bought one of the most capable and technically impressive road cars on the market.

“But the key with this project,” he adds, “and any vehicle that we do with Bespoke – previously and going forward – is that it’s all usable performance.

“The main reason that the P39 has the dynamics it does is that I hate driving performance cars on the road.

"We’ve tried to retain as much of the usability and flexibility that the 911 Turbo S has. In Normal mode it will feel quite sensible and not overly stiff, but then you can put it into Track mode and it will be capable of doing a sub-6min 45sec lap around the Nordschleife.”

That duality and ease of use – unusual attributes for such a rapid and hardcore machine – underpinned the project’s conception, says Mallock, which is why such rigid attention was paid to ensuring the substantial increase in performance didn’t come at the expense of ride comfort or composure.

RML claims that in 96.8% of road driving – referred to in hushed tones around the workshop as ‘The Magic 97%’ – the P39 has the same wheel rate as the Turbo S on which it is based.

Does that mean P39 owners will be inclined to use their car on a daily basis rather than rush it into a hermetically sealed private collection? “Go to Sainsbury’s and do the school run?” laughs Mallock. “I would be incredibly surprised, but I would love to see it.”

The P39’s use case as a supermarket shuttle is perhaps not cemented by the fact that the 911’s frunk has made way for a colossal air dam, sealed away behind that one-piece carbonfibre front end, but even so this is clearly not a car that has been engineered exclusively for circuit dominance.