There is much to be said for perseverance, and also for knowing when to stop. Somebody clearly forgot to tell that to Nick Butler, a man whose dogged determination to make the impossible possible is widely celebrated in hot rodding circles. Nevertheless, he is a man who has studiously avoided being pigeonholed, the breadth and span of his career being brought home as you scour the walls of his workshop in Dorking, Surrey. Vying for space are sepia-tinged images of custom cars and scale models of design concepts, not to mention cutaways, magazine clippings and plenty more besides.
Even so, the Auto Imagination founder is clearly not one to dwell on the past; at least not without a little prompting. He is rather more keen to discuss his latest project, one that is strictly not up for discussion in print, unfortunately, before conversation turns to aircraft, mountain bikes, supercars, digital CAD modelling, and creating one of the greatest show cars ever to turn a wheel in anger (or rather six of them), before coming full circle and discussing aircraft again. What is abundantly clear is that this likable engineer and artisan isn’t one to crow.
‘Cars and aircraft were my passion,
