Oh, my God.
How crazy!
Imagine a parallel universe where a Porsche 911
and a vintage IndyCar become one vehicle.
Such an alternate reality is the vision of Oil Stain Lab,
a California design shop ran by twin brothers.
The car is called the Half11,
for mostly obvious reasons.
Now, with the name Oil Stain Lab, you can almost call my shop that.
But their oil seems to be on the wall, instead of on the floor for me.
And this is exactly what
every single person sets out to make their garage or shop look like,
and it never ends up looking like this. This is like the dream.
We're here to see this,
whatever this is. (Laughs)
This is the Half11,
Part Porsche, part open-wheel race car, part speedster prototype.
A tribute to the 1970s, in both design and in racing,
and a rolling showcase of Oil Stain Lab's
multi-dimensional aesthetic sense.
Do I have a lot of questions for you.
Welcome, welcome.
- Rob. - Nikita.
Nice to meet you, man.
OK, I appreciate everything you've done, but it's almost left me
with more questions than answers.
So what is it?
What is it? Well, we call it the Half11.
It's a car my brother and I built.
And, yeah, it's our…
It's our dream car.
[Rob] It may be a dream car, but it is no sleeper.
650 horsepower, 650 ft-lbs of torque
and an 8,500 rpm redline.
Think of what that'll do in a car weighing just over 1,800 lb, all in.
[Nikita] I started about five years ago.
We bought a tub really cheap, for like 500 bucks, a 911 tub.
And we'd built a few 911s before,
so we kind of wanted to do something different.
And my twin brother, Iliya, actually did the key sketch
and it was side view.
Front was a 911 and the back was the Interscope IndyCar Porsche.
And he grafted the two together and we both saw that and we were like,
"That's it. We gotta build it."
So originally, it was a half 11. We cut it here.
And then, things kept getting in the way.
So we kept cutting, cutting, cutting, and a third of a 911 doesn't sound as cool,
so the name stuck.
And then, what is this set-up from?
Yeah, so, I mean, the back half of the car is pretty much where I guess
all the creativity is in a way, right?
We were totally free. Like, we could do whatever we wanted.
Took us forever to eventually narrow down the motors.
Originally, we wanted to use a Porsche motor.
We looked into it, but ultimately for the prototype
we decided to do an LS, because it makes crazy power.
It also lets us test water cooling.
So we've got our radiator up front, all the water lines and then the gearbox
transaxle is a flipped upside down 996 GT2 transmission.
- No way! - Yeah. - OK.
And then we've got our inboard suspension.
Those are actually IndyCar TTX 40s. - Mm-hmm.
Obviously, the exhaust is kind of the centrepiece.
It's a really crazy exhaust system. So it's full 3D-printed Inconel.
If you touch it, actually, you can see it's not round tube. Because it's 3D-printed,
we're able to create whatever section we want, which helps
with clearance, with flow, and also just like a stylistic flourish.
[Rob] So not just the header, the tube itself, this is 3D-printed?
- That's all 3D-printed, yeah. - Oh, my God.
[Nikita] So it's 1mm wall thickness
and, yeah, the sound is really cool because of that.
Is it what you visioned it to feel like when you drive it?
It's a little more rattly,
but it's not far off like a 60s-kinda racer, you know?
Yeah.
You hear every single piece of gravel.
Yeah, that, um…
You don't need a speedometer. Every mile an hour, you can feel.
Hey, that is… that is intense.
And I've been in some wild cars, but I think this one takes the cake.
Absolutely.
Now, he had the luxury of this.
[Nikita] Yeah, I was hiding behind it.
[Rob] I felt, like I said, every mile an hour.
The sound of that exhaust when you were downshifting and whatnot.
Oh, that sounded incredible.
It made an LS sound good.
Yeah, yeah, that's the goal.
I think people need to take note of that. The way their exhaust is set up,
so choice.
Wow.
Knowing this car was no typical garage-built hotrod,
as this was no typical garage,
I wanted to find out more about how Nikita and Iliya,
with their professional design background,
brought the Half11 to life.
I think what I want people to know
is, you don't just come up with this idea in one sketch and now you've built it.
It takes a lot of thought and iterations.
And so you're showing me, what? This is a piece of the exhaust?
So that's the exhaust tip.
It's all 3D-printed Inconel.
There's a reason for all the geometry, everything.
Like, we had to learn what you can print, what you can't print. - Right.
Everyone thinks you can do whatever you want, but you really can't.
The entire exhaust system, from start to finish, was about 18 months.
All right. Welcome to the studio.
Here's that exhaust. - Oh, now that is so cool.
So, we develop basically everything in CAD,
even the springs.
[Rob] And so what was the goal, doing this instead of
just going, you know, with a tube exhaust?
Yeah, so, obviously anyone who is familiar with kind of exhaust,
you deal with mandrel bending, right?
So you spec out your radiuses and you kind of go with that.
The problem with mandrel bending is it doesn't look organic. Right?
It doesn't look like the sand cast headers from the 1960s in F1.
With this, we're able to get within, basically, 5mm or something like that.
And so we're able to maximise, like, where the pipes go, their length, everything.
[Rob] Do you have pictures of, kind of, some of the ideas as they formed?
[Nikita] Yeah, I mean, so… here are just some projects.
This is like next gen of the Half11.
[Rob] Oh, that's cool.
Yeah, basically, this is how we sort of start with a car.
This is still preliminary front and rear subframes.
And then this would be sort of our aero study model,
so we can start figuring out where do we want to cut holes.
It's not really a design, but it's kind of like a packaging thing.
A concept like, OK,
if we put the air there, how do we feed it through here so that it gets out there.
[Rob] With this much effort put into it, the dream is to sell
multiples of these? To make multiples?
Yeah, so this'll be… You know, the original was kind of our dream.
And now that we know that there's, like, interest and people are interested
in purchasing something like that, we're doing our damned best
to make the best driver's car out there.
It is now my turn to drive this.
And I think it's fair to say that you can be nervous
of driving a car like this.
Oh, my God.
How crazy!
How amazing!
You can't even think when you have that much wind in your face.
As you almost expect, it's very stiff. It's a very stiff ride.
But, it should be. Like, this feels
exactly what it looks like.
You cannot be bored driving this.
You always hear about drivers' cars that engage and inspire the human behind the wheel.
The Half11 is that – and more.
Or, should I say - less?
Driving this thing is even crazier than the car looks in person.
I'm so glad that I didn't just get to see it in the shop,
but actually out here. I really thank you for doing that.
I genuinely have to commend you on the exhaust choice.
Because this is by far the best-sounding LS
that I've ever heard, and that is a hill I'm willing to die on.
[Nikita] Yeah, that's awesome.
I mean, we worked super-hard to change the sound and change the stigma of the LS, so
yeah, stoked to hear that.
[Rob] Yeah, so I think driving it helps me understand
what your vision was as a prototype and then where you're trying to go with it.
Does it feel like it made that progress?
Like, OK, here comes the next version?
Yeah, I mean, we've learned so much from this.
This is like the baby first step, where we're learning from it. And, yeah,
we'll make the next one better.
The potential next version of the car has a windshield?
Has a windshield. It's a coupe.
Gullwing doors, more creature comforts, more space.
There will be the speedster version, of course. - Yeah. - You know.
I really have to say a genuine ‘thank you’ for taking the risk, honestly.
Because this is not close to anything else that I see
on the internet or close to anything else I see people trying to do.
So I commend you for persevering.
Yeah, I mean, for me, it's just a thrill to see someone else driving it.
You know, when you build a car, you're always a little bit, like, precious
and you always drive it, and you never get to see it from outside.
So, yeah, you're driver number four.
Yeah, so the other guys were like stunt-drivers and, yeah…
- OK. - so you're in good company.
It's rare that a build really captures
not only the technical skill but also a truly unique vision.
Nikita and Iliya did that with the Half11,
and I can't wait to see what's next
from the parallel universe of Oil Stain Lab.