the birth of our D8 Sport

The Donkervoort factory in Lelystad in the Netherlands. In the factory about 35 employees produce about 60 of these high tech Sports Cars. The production is estimated to grow to about 100 Donkervoort cars per year.

This is the chassis welding department. Here the chassis is constructed out of laser cut material. The chassis is welded with cupper. A finished chassis without the black powder coating weights about 45 Kg in total.

The chassis is powder coated with black powder coating.

Here the aluminum body panels and GFK body parts are mounted to the chassis.

One of the most difficult jobs is the panel beating- folding over the tube frame on the backside of the car. This can only be performed by highly skilled people. The white material is the protective plastic sticking to the aluminum body panels.

In this stage the front suspension, gearbox and wiring loom are mounted. The cars are build by various teams. Per production phase there is only one person with final responsibility over quality control.

The nose cones are produced out of Glass Fibre in house.

When the major components are fitted, the basic wheel alignment is done.

Here the left side of the welded aluminum fuel tank can be seen. The D8 has two of these tanks. The D8 Sport has ventilated brake disks. WP shock absorbers are mounted. Here you an also see the rivets used to mount the glass fibre wheel covers.

One step further the covers are mounted.

Here the carbon fibre dashboard is mounted. The red carpe is glued inside the body panels. That smell, just great!

The oil cooler and front suspension without the cycle wing wheel covers mounted.

Here you can see that the VIN code plate mentions that the car is especially built for me and Jacqueline.

A major problem was that Jacqueline could not reach the clutch pedal. So it was manufactured about 3 cm longer than the original version. Here Jacqueline can be seen in a showroom car, which was fully stripped to measure the correct pedal length.

This is the left side of the Donkervoort showing the Audi 1.8 Liter turbo charged engine. The air intake box with air filter can be seen here.

Here the turbo and waste gate can be seen.

The seat needed some adjustment too for Jacky!

Almost ready now after about 4 months of construction time. WOW!

Champaign for AFTER our first drive.

Very emotional. We had to leave our first Donkervoort and `wedding car` behind. It was sold to a new Donkervoort enthusiast within one day!

In our workshop at home the car was treated with Protech , a special Teflon like coating, to protect the Jaguar Racing Green paint. Jeroen from ProRepair (00 31 30 212 93 27) did a fine job here.