What’s Good: Marino Franchitti
Note: This is a new interview series where we check in with some of our favorite people in and around cars. If there’s someone you’d like us to talk to, mention them in the comments.
Singer Vehicle Design sells restoration services for the 964-generation Porsche 911 for a lot more than the value guides would tell you they’re worth. For some people on the internet, it’s hard to understand why you’d pay so much to then get on a wait list for a restoration when there are so many other great Porsche restorers out there. Seeing one up close makes it clearer, but when you drive one, you start thinking about what on earth you could do to afford one. The cars look the way they do because founder Rob Dickinson is famously detail-obsessed. They drive the way they do, in large part because of Marino Franchitti.
An accomplished racing driver, Franchitti has a special knack for car development which he now applies to everything Singer restores. It’s one thing to make a brand new car handle the way you want it, but it’s an entirely different thing to start with a decades-old chassis and coax several distinct and excellent driver experiences out of it.
A lot of companies as small as Singer wouldn’t have a Chief Test Driver on staff. But, wringing a truly special “look back at your car in disbelief” experience from the hardpoints of a 964 requires a lot of development time with someone who is really good at communicating what they feel from the car to engineers, who are not typically “feel” people.
Before it gets to what’s becoming a large engineering team, that process starts with Singer clients, Dickinson, Franchitti and Chief Strategy Officer Maz Fawaz. Basic parameters, the kind of “idea of the car” gets set, and the process begins — regardless of powertain, paint, interior etc, the restorations all share a certain sensibility, a sense of taste. It applies to the aesthetic aspects of the cars, the finishes, etc. But it also applies to the driving experience, the way things are weighted, the way the car behaves, etc. Every restoration starts as a 964, but over the course of a long development process, it gains its own character. There are targets, the engineers have goals, but that’s not exactly the point.
Franchitti says, “I’ve driven a lot of these cars where, yeah, they’ll set your hair on fire, but there’s absolutely no … it’s just like a tool to do a job. There’s no, like, romantic connection almost.” The Singer philosophy, and Franchitti’s, is more about that feel than absolute speed, “I know, I am very, very precise in what I want, how I want things to feel, how I want the car to talk to me. The performance numbers are not important. If you get the right numbers together, and you do a good job, the end product will be right. I’m not into overall performance. It’s how the car makes you feel, how it gets there, how it talks to you, really.”
After our Singer conversation, we posed the same handful of questions we’ll pose in every entry of this series to Franchitti, to get a sense of what he’s into right now.
Alloy: What work project are you most excited about right now?
MF: Well, I think [DLS-Turbo services] the cars are close to being in the customer’s hands, so it’s just finishing off all those last little details. That is a really exciting time, to get to the end of that process, and to start to hear how these clients feel about their restorations.
Alloy: What personal project are you most excited about right now?
MF: My wife and I just bought a new—I say a new house, a house that needs a lot of work—so I’m really excited about getting into that over the next year. A little bit of trepidation, but excitement too.
Alloy: Yeah, it’s always fun at the beginning.
MF: Exactly.
Alloy: What are you listening to?
MF: Um, I’m listening to a lot of different stuff at the moment, but in heavy rotation right now, according to my Apple stats from the year … Jamiroquai, Dire Straits, Steve Winwood, that has been the three biggest this year with Coldplay coming in a sort of fourth place.
Alloy: What are you reading?
MF: I just got the new Artifacts book that Type 7 have done on [Porsche] Motorsport. Which also is something that means a lot to me. I think that Ted Gushue and the guys have done the most ridiculous job with Artifacts, the first book and then this one. It’s like theater when you get the book and you unwrap it and it’s got a belt on it, this one. I’ve actually just taken it out of the box and I am not gonna read it until I’ve got the time to read every single page in one go.
Alloy: What’s a trend in cars that you’re excited about?
MF: I think I’m excited about people extending the life of the internal combustion engine. But also people making exciting things, like us restoring these old cars, people like Gordon Murray, creating new cars, but with all of the ingredients that made us fall in love with these cars, with cars as a whole genre.
Alloy: What movie have you been thinking about?
MF: Because of the time of year, my son and I have been watching a lot of Christmas movies. So Elf has been … we’ve been watching that a lot, and he loves Home Alone. I’ve been trying to get him into Christmas Vacation as well, but he’s not as into it as I am.
Alloy: What’s a car you haven’t been able to get out of your head?
MF: I think it’s … 250 F, Maserati. That’s something that, yeah, if I had like one tank of fuel, let’s say it’s in that. That’s something that comes back to me all the time.
Alloy: If you had to buy a car today, what would you buy?
MF: I think it changes daily, but I think our DLS program was something that was so close to my heart. What we were able to do with this tiny—I can’t tell you how small the crew was that made that happen. And then what came out at the end of it. I still get really excited when I drive them, especially now, I’m not thinking about anything but just enjoying it. I’d buy a DLS.
Alloy: What’s a car that you love but would never want to own?
MF: McLaren F1, GTR. I prefer GTR to the road car, but yeah, the F1 is such a great car to use and spend time in, but the stress of something that is that value now, that is so hard to fix. There’s a tipping point where the joy goes out of it.
Alloy: What’s a car that surprised you by being either better or worse than you expected?
MF: 037 Lancia road car. I was expecting quite a … blunt instrument, let’s say. And it’s also got the same gear shift knob as a Fiat Uno, so I was expecting the gear shift not to be nice. It had the best gear shift of any car of all time, I think. And it was actually just, it was beautifully restored the one I drove, but it actually just did everything well. Such a cool thing.
Alloy: Who is doing the best car content right now?
MF: I still think it’s Chris Harris. He’s the one who I am drawn to. I wish he’d write more because he’s a great writer. But I love, when I’m watching him doing a video, it’s like, him and I sitting having a beer talking about cars, and that’s a special skill. When you’re on screen, you got to turn everything up, but yeah, Chris is awesome. You’ve seen these guys who are—don’t get me wrong, everyone on camera needs to turn up a little bit, otherwise you don’t come across well—but he’s really genuine in his thoughts and his experiences and he gets across exactly what’s going on.
Alloy: One more, just because I’m curious. What is it about Porsche?
MF: Ooh, I think it’s, I think it’s a usability. And sort of being able to hide in plain sight. And the fact that you just go there and it works, you start it up and it goes. It’s generally the underpromise and overdeliver.
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