Reeves Callaway builds one of the fastest and most exclusive cars in the world, the 302kph Callaway C12. Never seen one? It's not surprising; only 26 of them exist.
At the heart of the C12 is a Corvette, with a 440hp version of a Corvette engine.
But the C12 is lower, sleeker and more exotic than a Corvette, with body panels made in Germany and sculptured to create an aggressive feline crouch. It can zoom from zero to 60mph (97kph) in a heart-stopping 4.5 seconds, and four-piston disc brakes stop it almost as quickly.
Driving a C12 (Andrew J. McKelvey, the chief executive of TMP Worldwide, an advertising and corporate staffing company, was gracious enough to lend his for a brief spin) is both exhilarating and nerve-racking. It roars as it moves down a Manhattan avenue, but it is surprisingly docile while waiting out the red lights. When there is a chance to open it up a bit, its driver learns how quickly another vehicle far ahead can become an imminent obstacle.
Callaway would like to sell more C12s, though he is not willing to bring down the US$225,000 price. They are a sideline to his basic business: Modifying cars for companies like Ford and General Motors to make them go faster -- a lot faster.
Automakers busy churning out high-volume models often don't have time to develop limited-edition, high-performance versions, but those are the cars that attract breathless publicity, and their luster can give a manufacturer both prestige and that valuable public approval known as street cred.
The phrase "Race on Sunday, sell on Monday" is as old as the car business. So the companies hire people like Callaway to take popular models -- like the Corvette, his specialty -- and modify them with more powerful engines, lighter and more aerodynamic bodies, some of the biggest brakes on the planet, advanced suspension designs and special road-gripping tires.
Callaway's company, Callaway Cars, is based in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and about to expand to Orange County, California. Its two buildings in Old Lyme amount to 1,672m2 and look more like corporate offices than palaces of speed, though the parking lot holds its share of exotica.
Where you might expect to find greasy engines dripping oil onto a scarred concrete floor, you see surgically clean white rooms with polished engines sitting on test beds, wired to banks of computers. The staff of 40 walks around in Dockers and polo shirts with the Callaway logo. Callaway spends much of his time looking for new business. "That's why we're expanding to California," he said. Orange County is where many of the Japanese and European companies have their American headquarters.
Callaway, 54, is the son of Ely Callaway (who introduced the Big Bertha golf club) and, since 2000, the husband of Sue Callaway, a onetime Jaguar North America executive and Fortune magazine auto writer who is now expecting the couple's first child.
He was an open-wheel Formula Vee racing driver in the early 1970s and won a national championship in 1973, but was diverted into modifying sports cars after fitting a turbocharger to a BMW 320i he had used for teaching racing. A one-page article about it appeared in Car and Driver magazine in 1977, and soon other BMW owners were looking for him. Callaway Cars became a serious business.
In 1984, with the blessing of Alfa Romeo's US distributor, Callaway added not one but two turbochargers to the Alfa GTV6, which had been selling slowly in the US. The 154hpengine was transformed into a 230-horsepower screamer that could rocket the car to 60mph in 5.9 seconds.
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