Keeping the heat in the exhaust also improves the car's performance, Litchfield explains: “The more heat and energy you can keep in the system, the faster the turbo will spool up, making the car more responsive. We're finding it's bringing the turbo up to speed 300 or 400 rpm sooner, which you can really feel in the crispness of the throttle response. It's little details like this that end up making a big difference and we wanted to make sure there were no corners cut on this car.”

Alongside its supercar performance, Litchfield wanted to be able to offer family saloon standards of reliability. “This is a production-quality car and comes with a full warranty,” he says. “It has to be much more reliable and dependable than a tuner's special that you'd spend all your weekends getting perfect. It's going to be bought by people who already own other high-performance cars. They want to be able to use it every day, do the shopping and pick up the kids but still have the performance of their 911.”

To sell a product to this discerning clientele, it was important to Litchfield to use a solution that was professional looking as well as durable. “This is a 'halo' product for us, we wanted it to be as OEM-looking as possible. The coating is also much more durable than the alternatives, too. Heat shielding wraps and tapes are a 'Band-Aid' fix, they're not suitable for someone who doesn't want to spend all their time working on their car.”

Building such specialist vehicles is a big step for a company that originally just imported vehicles. Litchfield says suppliers like Zircotec make the process easier. “We've been really pleased with their turnaround. The logistics of getting all the parts here at the right time can be a nightmare, so it's great to know that we can take our exhausts to Zircotec and have them back three days later, ready to go. It takes a lot of stress out of the process.”

Litchfield has been so impressed by the performance and reliability benefits that the Zircotec coating has offered that it plans to use it more widely: “Eventually we hope to offer it as an option on all the cars we do.”