WORK / LIFE HP INNOVATION FALL / WINTER 2022 71
1964
ROAD TRIP The BAC Mono R hugs the narrow lanes on a test drive through the Welsh countryside .
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HEN IAN BRIGGS and his brother Neill were working for leading automobile manufacturers in Europe , helping them build world-class vehicles , they realized that every car on the road had trade-offs : performance or utility , safety or sleekness . What if , they wondered , they were to build a car that embodied an uncompromising , monomaniacal devotion to maximal driving thrills ?
In 2009 the two Brits formed the
Briggs Automotive Company ( BAC ) in Liverpool and set about making their perfect automobile . The result is the BAC
Mono , the only single-seat supercar in the world , a vehicle that is truly one-of-a-kind .
Sleek , low , with lines that echo the Batmobile ( if the Dark Knight ’ s ride were restyled as a spacecraft ), the Mono is hand-constructed and bespoke , much like a Savile Row suit . Almost everything about it can be personalized , from individual color schemes to the single-seat , made-tomeasure cockpit with pedals , seat , and steering wheel molded to the owner ’ s body and hand grip . With 0 to 60 miles per hour in 2.7 seconds , the $ 210,000-plus supercar is as fast as it looks , and offers the closest experience to driving a Formula 1 racing car on the street .
“ What differentiates Mono as a product from another car is that it has not been designed as a means of transport ,” Ian Briggs says . “ It ’ s been designed like a piece of equipment for an extreme sport .”
A big part of what makes the Mono possible is its designers ’ use of HP technologies , from Z by HP highperformance workstations to Multi Jet Fusion 3D printing tech , which allows BAC designers and engineers to customize parts to an almost infinite degree .
“ These guys are at the pinnacle of car design , and their design and engineering teams are amazing ,” says Anthony Graves , HP Global Segment Lead for product design . “ They ’ re an incredible development partner .”
Technology to get the Mono road-ready By 2019 the company had built over a hundred cars for gearheads and celebrities such as Hell ’ s Kitchen star chef Gordon Ramsay . But the Briggs brothers weren ’ t satisfied . Every Mono car starts out as a collection of detailed computer-aided design files that are made “ real ” for the customer via photorealistic images that help the buyer picture every detail of how their vehicle will look , down to the shade of cherry red on a rearview mirror . In designing each customized vehicle , they were pushing the limits of their computer and manufacturing system .
“ We had to leave the machines rendering overnight to get any kind of high-quality images ,” Ian Briggs says . They realized they needed more powerful tech at their disposal .
The Briggses found it by taking their operations endto-end with HP , a transition that transformed every aspect of BAC ’ s work at its headquarters . J
HP 5060A The Cesium Beam Frequency Standard atomic clock was designed to maintain accuracy for 3,000 years within one second of error . The technology played a critical role in the 1960s space race . The so-called flying clock synchronized all 18 tracking stations and communications systems in NASA ’ s network , enabling real-time communication between Houston ’ s Mission Control and the 1968 Apollo 8 and 1969 Apollo 11 spacecraft .