IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS, THIS CAR. I RECKON YOU'RE LOOKING AT IT AND THINKING ‘WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO A BMW Z8?'

The Smit Oletha isn’t some Z8 tribute act, it’s what happens when two brothers decide to make the car BMW couldn’t

- OLIVER MARRIAGE

Palomar mountain, Southern California. The road climbs almost a vertical kilometre from Lake Henshaw to the Caltech Observatory at 1,712 metres. America hides these astonishing sections of tarmac in plain sight. It just tucks them away well. This one’s called East Grade Road. That’s not a signpost that makes you want to investigate is it? I suppose you might come this way if you were to take the cross country route from San Diego inland to Palm Springs, but the satnav would have you down in the valley on Highway 79, not up riding the twisting crest of this astonishing ridgeline.

I can’t help but feel a more wafting cruise ’n’ pose would better suit the car I’m about to drive. We could have taken the Smit Oletha to the coastal boulevards around La Jolla or Malibu, but the brothers are insistent that their restomod is a 996-generation Porsche 911 GT3 rival.

It never was 20-odd years ago. It might have had the powertrain from the E39 M5, but the Z8 was a concept car that lucked its way into production on the strength of its looks. It was a lazily relaxed machine with easy torque and a less than attacking nature – 5,700 were made from 1999–2003.

This isn’t one of them. And at this point I ought to introduce ‘the brothers’. Willem and Kaess Smit are both BMW disciples (that happens when your dad smoked around in an E39 M5 during your formative years) and mechanical engineers. Kaess’s background is aerospace and advanced composites, while Willem has done stints at both Tesla and Singer. And, like so many of us, they weren’t happy with the direction BMW has taken recently. But unlike us they decided to do something about it.