In 2020, Matt Prior discovered as much when he drove the D8 GTO, the model that makes way for the wilder F22. It was “blindingly quick” and “thoroughly sorted” but also on another level to anything by Caterham in terms of weekend-away ability. The catch? An eye-widening price.
On the way here, quite naturally, I was preoccupied with the driving element. That power-to-weight ratio borders on the macabre and rain was forecast. However, once on the factory floor, the balance shifts.
Passing through the double doors that connect Donkervoort’s showroom to the workshop behind, you begin to understand how Augustus Gloop may have felt when he found himself backstage at the Chocolate Factory: transfixed.
Machine polishers whirr, blue blasts emanate from the brazing bench where the F22’s thin-gauge tubular frame is made, and colour is everywhere: Audi’s red-headed engines, gold AP Racing calipers ready to install, colour-coded diffuser vanes and coil springs, and the flawless paint jobs of cars in build, with no two alike.
One is done up in the colour scheme of Ayrton Senna’s helmet, another in Gulf livery. It sounds like over-egging the pudding somewhat but, honestly, both Donks look sensationally good.
It’s enough to make you overlook the most important colour of all: grey. Or rather, the charcoal hue of carbonfibre. And not typical carbonfibre, which is laid up in strips then baked in an autoclave, though they have one of those too.
This is the cutting-edge bit of the F22, because Donkervoort has spent 10 years developing what it calls Ex-Core – an ultra-strong composite made by filling shells of carbon with foam that expands when heated inside a mould. The foam solidies, giving the part immense resistance to deformity but incredible lightness.
The Ex-Core hub is hidden away at the back of the workshop proper and isn’t only tasked with making F22 bits. It’s a charming quirk of the Donkervoort operation that in one corner of this tiny factory they might be restoring an S8T from 1985, while at the other end the Ex-Core team are constructing aero elements for overnight shipping and fitment to, for example, Toyota’s GR010 LMH.
