The December morning was still black when William stepped out of the modest inn where he was staying. It was a few minutes' drive from the Aston Martin Factory. His breath curled in the air like pale smoke. The streetlamps glowed weakly through a veil of cold mist, and the only sound was the faint clatter of a milkman's cart making its slow way down the lane. A light frost had settled on the cobblestones overnight, creating a treacherous glaze that caught what little illumination filtered down from the gas lamps above.
A black Vauxhall Cresta waited by the curb, its warm exhaust swirling in the chill. The driver who was a tall fellow in a flat cap, straightened when he saw William approach, then moved to open the rear door with practiced efficiency. The man's hands bore the calluses of a lifetime spent gripping steering wheels, and his weathered face suggested he'd driven these routes countless times before.
"Fort Dunlop, sir?"
"That's right," William replied, placing his attaché and suitcase inside. The driver was hired by David to take him to Fort Dunlop. "Straight through. No detours."
The Cresta pulled away, tyres crunching over grit that the council had scattered to combat the overnight ice. The first few miles passed in silence, broken only by the steady rhythm of the engine and the occasional hum of passing lorries laden with goods for the London markets. William leaned back against the leather upholstery, letting his mind go through various plans and projects. Some in USA, another here. Most of them in initial stage and very few close to completion.
The windows began to fog with their breath, and the driver reached forward to adjust the demisting vents. Outside, the countryside lay dormant under winter's grip — fields brown with stubble, hedgerows bare except for the occasional holly bush bearing its defiant red berries, farmhouses sending thin columns of smoke into the grey sky as their occupants stirred to life.
Months earlier, Dunlop had supplied Zephyr with a batch of performance tyres. At the time, they'd seemed promising — a step forward from the competition, and certainly suitable for the road-going cars in Zephyr's stable. The tyres had arrived with all the ceremony due to cutting-edge technology: engineers from both companies had gathered at the Zephyr facility to oversee the delivery, checking pressures with precision instruments, discussing optimal operating temperatures and load ratings with the sort of reverence usually reserved for religious artifacts.
But few days back when the supercar began serious testing, the truth had shown itself with brutal clarity.
At 210 to 220 miles per hour, the tyres were beyond their limits. One burst, and the result was catastrophic. The car had burnt and turned to scrap. Thank God, that the driver was saved and had sustained just minor injuries.
And the post-mortem was clear: they could barely hold 200 mph for a handful of minutes before the heat build-up made them unsafe. Later examinations had all but confirmed that the tires would distort and burst at such high speeds. It was fine if the plan was to use it for few minutes. But anything over 10-15 minutes, and results would be devastating.
That wasn't good enough. Not for the car William was building, not for the vision he had of Zephyr's place in the pantheon of high-performance manufacturers.
He had dispatched Sam to Fort Dunlop two days ago with instructions to explore alternatives, to press the engineers for more, to see whether Dunlop could rise to the challenge. Sam reports from Dunlop had been encouraging, if expensive. The tyres were prohibitively costly — each costing in the region of $550–600, with specialized compounds and construction techniques that required hand-assembly by Dunlop's most skilled craftsmen. A complete set came to nearly $2,000, a figure that in 1961 could have bought a perfectly respectable small car, perhaps even a second-hand Jaguar Mark IX. But price was a secondary concern; performance was everything in the rarefied air where Zephyr intended to compete.
The Cresta merged onto the A5, the road broadening as they left the quiet lanes of Buckinghamshire behind. The driver settled into a steady cruise, the engine note dropping to a comfortable thrum. They passed through villages where smoke was beginning to rise from chimneys, where shopkeepers were raising their shutters and setting out the day's wares, where life was stirring to its ancient rhythms despite the industrial revolution that had transformed the landscape beyond recognition.
The Midlands stretched out in winter greys: frost-limned hedgerows, bare-branched trees etched against a washed-out sky, the occasional factory chimney standing like a sentry over rows of terraced houses. Here and there, a parish church spire rose above the industrial sprawl, a reminder of the England that had existed before steam and steel reshaped the world. The industrial heart of England was waking up — railway sidings stacked with coal wagons, warehouse doors rolling open to the clatter of early shifts, men in flat caps cycling to work through the cold, their breath visible in small puffs as they pedalled along the frost-slicked roads.
Coventry appeared on their left, its skyline dominated by the cathedral spire that had somehow survived the Luftwaffe's attention. The city bore its wartime scars with dignity, new construction rising alongside buildings that showed the pockmarks of shrapnel and the irregular lines of hasty reconstruction.
By the time they reached Birmingham, daylight had begun to filter through the mist. The city sprawled before them in all its Victorian grandeur and post-war pragmatism: grand civic buildings sharing space with utilitarian factories, the canal system threading between them like arteries carrying the lifeblood of commerce. Narrow boats moved slowly along the waterways, their painted decorations bright against the dull water, carrying coal and manufactured goods to destinations across the Midlands.
Fort Dunlop rose ahead like some industrial citadel — a vast brick structure, seemingly endless in length, rows of identical windows catching the weak sun. The building stretched for nearly half a mile along the road, a monument to the rubber industry's dominance in British manufacturing. Even from the road, William could smell the distinctive aroma: sharp, chemical, and faintly metallic, the scent of vulcanized rubber mixed with the petroleum-based solvents used in the manufacturing process.
The factory gates were busy with the morning shift change, workers streaming in through the main entrance, lunch pails in hand, newspapers tucked under arms. Guards in company uniforms checked passes with practiced efficiency, their breath visible in small clouds as they exchanged greetings with familiar faces. A small queue of delivery lorries waited at the goods entrance, their drivers drinking tea from thermos flasks while warehouse staff prepared to unload the day's shipments of raw materials.
Sam was waiting at the main entrance; coat collar up against the wind that channelled between the factory buildings. He looked tired — the pallor of a man who'd spent two days breathing factory air and drinking too much coffee — but there was a spark of satisfaction in his eyes, the look of an engineer who'd found solutions to seemingly impossible problems.
"You made good time," he said, shaking William's hand with fingers that carried the faint smell of rubber and industrial solvents.
"Drivers got a light foot," William replied with a faint smile. "How's it been?"
"Busy. We've been at it nearly non-stop since I arrived. They've taken the old carcass design and rebuilt it from the ground up — nylon cords instead of rayon, and a new chemical treatment in the rubber compound that includes silica additives and modified sulphur cross-linking agents. The heat dissipation is dramatically improved. We're seeing 220 mph sustained for close to thirty minutes before structural fatigue sets in."
"That's a jump," William said evenly, his expression giving nothing away. In the automotive world, such improvements were measured in percentages, not the order-of-magnitude leap Sam was describing. "And the burst?"
"None so far in controlled testing. But they still fail after that window — it's not catastrophic like before, just gradual loss of shape integrity. Once the heat starts to deform the sidewall, they're done. Straight to the scrap pile, no recovery possible."
They stepped inside, through heavy glass doors that bore the Dunlop logo in gold leaf, into a lobby warmed by steam radiators that clanked and hissed with Victorian reliability. The air was a blend of paper, oil, and rubber — an odd mixture of office and factory that spoke to the dual nature of modern manufacturing. Polished linoleum floors reflected the overhead lights, and the walls bore framed photographs chronicling Dunlop's racing heritage: victories at Le Mans, triumphant drivers hoisting trophies, cars crossing finish lines on Dunlop rubber.
Waiting there was Sir Reginald Cooper, Dunlop's president: a man in his sixties, broad-shouldered, in a well-cut pinstripe suit. His handshake was firm, his expression all boardroom civility mixed with the genuine pride of a man who'd spent his career building one of Britain's industrial champions. The slight Northern accent in his voice hinted at origins far from the executive suites he now inhabited.
"Mr. Harrow, welcome back," Cooper said warmly, his smile carrying the practiced sincerity of a man who'd spent decades navigating corporate negotiations. "We've been looking forward to showing you what we've accomplished. I think you'll find we've exceeded even our own expectations."
"I've been looking forward to seeing it," William replied, settling his briefcase more securely. "Let's get to it."
The first stop was the executive conference room — polished oak table that could seat twenty, framed photographs of racing victories on the walls, a scale model of the 1958 Le Mans-winning Jaguar C-Type under glass, its racing number still visible on the bodywork. Tea was poured from bone china service, pleasantries exchanged about the journey and the weather, and Cooper gave the sort of speech William had heard in a dozen boardrooms: an acknowledgement of the "challenging nature" of Zephyr's requirements, pride in Dunlop's engineering capabilities, and the assurance that today's presentation would speak for itself.
From there, they moved onto the production floors, passing through security doors marked with warnings about authorized personnel only. William had toured them before, but the sheer scale still impressed: curing presses three storeys tall that operated under pressures that could crush a man, rubber being extruded in endless black ribbons that wound onto massive spools, workers trimming treads with quick, precise cuts that spoke of years of experience. The heat from the machinery was tangible, making the air shimmer like summer asphalt, the smell of raw rubber clinging to every surface and seeming to penetrate clothing and skin.
The research wing was where the real work — and the real money — lived. Smaller, quieter, lined with machinery designed for measurement rather than mass production. White-coated engineers moved between rigs where tyres spun against massive steel drums, gauges tracking heat, load, and deformation in real time. Computer terminals — still a novelty in 1961 — displayed scrolling readouts of data that would have taken teams of mathematician's weeks to analyse just a decade earlier.
Dr. Hughes, Dunlop's lead engineer, greeted William with a brisk handshake. He was a thin man with premature grey hair and the intense gaze of someone who lived among equations and molecular structures. "We've built on your earlier set," he said, gesturing toward a rack of tyres that gleamed with an almost mirror finish. "Nylon cords give us better shape retention at high speeds — they don't stretch like rayon under centrifugal force. The chemical treatment in the rubber incorporates new plasticizers that maintain flexibility at higher temperatures, slowing the rate of heat build-up by nearly forty percent. In our trials, we can sustain two-twenty for twenty-eight minutes before deformation begins. At that point, the tyre's unsafe for further use, but the degradation is gradual, controllable."
"And the cost?" William asked, though Sam's reports had already given him the figures.
Hughes hesitated just a fraction, the pause of a technical man forced to discuss commercial realities. "Five hundred and fifty to six hundred dollars per tyre, depending on the specific compound formulation. The nylon cords alone cost three times what we pay for rayon, and the new rubber compound requires a twelve-hour curing cycle compared to the standard four hours."
William gave a single nod. "Let's see them run."
The first test was on Dunlop's private banked oval, a scaled-down version of Brooklands that the company used for high-speed testing. A stripped-down test car — all engine and minimal bodywork, looking more like a guided missile than an automobile — sat waiting, its new tyres still carrying the faint sheen of release agent from the moulds. The driver, a compact man in coveralls who'd spent his career pushing machinery to its limits, gave a thumbs-up from the cockpit.
Hughes gave the signal, and the driver eased onto the banking with the smooth precision of long experience. The engine's note climbed steadily, settling into a sustained scream as the car reached speed. William watched the tachometer readings on Hughes's clipboard: 200 mph, 210, 220, the numbers holding steady as the car circled the track in a blur of motion and sound.
The stopwatch in Hughes's hand ticked steadily. Twenty minutes. Twenty-five. At twenty-eight, Hughes raised his arm in the prearranged signal, and the car bled speed before coasting into the pit lane, the driver's face flushed with the adrenaline of sustained high-speed running.
Mechanics swarmed over the car before it had fully stopped, jacking it up with the urgency of a Formula One pit stop, pulling the tyres free with practiced efficiency. William crouched to run a hand along the sidewall of one, his fingers reading the story written in heat-stressed rubber. The tread looked healthy, the wear pattern even, but the faint ripple under the surface told him exactly how close to the limit it had been pushed.
"Any longer and we'd have a repeat of your last test," Sam murmured quietly, his engineer's eye reading the same signs William had spotted.
Back in the lab, the second test was destructive by design: a mounted tyre on a high-speed rig, loaded and spun until it failed. The machine looked like an instrument of torture, all steel and hydraulics, designed to push materials beyond their breaking point in the name of scientific understanding. The noise, when it came, was sudden and violent — a gunshot crack followed by the rattle of fragments against the steel shielding that surrounded the test apparatus.
Dinner that evening was served in the executive dining room — silver service that reflected the overhead chandeliers, wine in crystal glasses that sang when touched, conversation measured and careful. Cooper made his pitch: the performance gains that would set Zephyr apart from its competitors, the exclusivity of access to Dunlop's most advanced technology, the prestige that came with using rubber compounds developed for Grand Prix racing.
William listened, sipped his wine. It was a decent Bordeaux that spoke of Cooper's attention to detail as well as good taste and gave nothing away. His face remained composed and neutral.
The next morning brought further trials — variations on load, ambient temperature, and tread pattern. Hughes walked them through mountains of data, the figures neatly tabulated in leather-bound reports, the graphs showing performance curves that remained admirably flat until they started dipping precipitously around 26 minute mark. It was a cliff edge of performance, sharp and unforgiving, but at least it was a predictable one.
Finally, in the conference room, Cooper went through the cost structure again, his fountain pen scratching figures across foolscap as he explained how each tyre's price reflected not just materials, but the intensive labour and testing involved in their creation. Each tyre represented nearly forty hours of skilled work, from the initial mixing of compounds to the final quality inspection.
William set down his coffee cup — bone China that bore Dunlop's corporate crest — and met the older man's gaze with the directness that had served him well in a dozen similar negotiations.
"We'll proceed," he said simply, "Mrs. Patterson will coordinate with you on the contract and delivery schedules. I'll want the first set within six weeks."
Cooper's smile was genuine this time, relief and satisfaction mixing in his expression. "I think you'll be very pleased with the results, William. These tyres will transform what's possible at those speeds."
Outside, the cold hit them again with renewed force, the afternoon air sharp with the promise of more frost to come. As they walked toward the waiting Cresta, their footsteps echoing off the brick facades of the factory buildings, Sam spoke quietly, his voice carrying the concern of a man who could see further down the technological road than most.
"One thing you should know — they've no plans to move to radials. None at all. They think cross-ply is still the future for performance applications, that radials are just a passing fad for family cars."
William stopped, looked out across the grey sprawl of Birmingham, at the forest of factory chimneys sending their columns of smoke into the winter sky.
"That's short-sighted," he said finally. "Keep them for now — they'll serve our immediate needs. But start talking to Michelin. Pirelli. Anyone who's serious about radials. We don't want to be caught flat-footed when the technology shifts. And I have seen how it is going. Any upgrade beyond this will be minor at best…It is radials we need."
The ride back to London was quiet, the landscape rolling past in muted winter tones as they retraced their morning's journey. Villages appeared and disappeared in the gathering dusk, their windows beginning to glow with electric light and gas flames. By the time they reached the capital's outskirts, full darkness had fallen, and the city spread before them in a galaxy of illumination.
By nightfall, William was boarding a BOAC 707 at Heathrow, the lights of the airport falling away beneath the wing as the aircraft climbed into the star-filled sky. He closed his eyes, already thinking ahead to the next round of testing of their supercar. Hopefully not as catastrophic as the last one.