About

Dan is an automotive/ motorsports engineer by trade and most famously, responsible for the TVR Sagaris.

Daniel has a wealth of experience from his time at various automotive manufactures including TVR Sports Cars where he led the TVR Sagaris Project with Peter Wheeler, which was described by Jeremy Clarkson “the best TVR ever made”.  Dan has also worked for a number of race and rally teams.

At 8 years old Dan was racing model cars and spent a lot of time helping out at his Dad’s salvage yard and his uncle’s mot garage.  After obtaining a HND in Engineering at Preston College, Dan went to New Zealand to work in a busy service station where he ended up building and running the owner’s Subaru Rally Car. Dan went on to co-drive his first rally, compete in the 1999 Rally of New Zealand and manage the team through the 1999 season. His passion for rallying led to the success of the team, competing in twice as many events and achieving their best results to date, but Dan always had an eye on the driver’s seat.

At the end of ‘99 Dan decided he needed some serious qualifications so came back the UK to study Motorsports Engineering at the University of Central Lancashire. The University had just bought a Classic 1989 Raynard Formula Ford which was in poor condition. Between lectures, rugby and the pub Dan and his class mate Alex rebuilt the car for the following season. Having known very little about racing as opposed to rallying Dan managed the team to their first Championship Victory in its debut year.

Meanwhile Dan had started competing with his own rally team and won a rally scholarship. Dan has built various rally cars and successfully competed in the Fiesta Sporting Trophy and Peugeot 205 challenge. Dan has also worked with Juno Race Cars and for an endurance stock 1000 super bike team.

After a successful interview with the late owner, Peter Wheeler, Dan’s placement year was with TVR Sports Cars in Blackpool. For Dan it was an incredible place to work he was able to get involved with everything from test driving on track days to research, development, production and design. Dan worked on the Tuscan R, Typhon, T350, Tuscan and Tamora and even packed in a season of the weekends as a race engineer on the famous 900bhp TVR Speed 12.

On return for the final University year Dan was appointed technical director for the successful, Formula UCLAN, Formula Student project that won best British design and best new comer.

In 2003 Daniel returned to TVR to start his professional career where he was to head up the latest project. “On my second day at TVR, Peter turned round and said “I want a road track car based on the T350 but 2 inches wider and it’s called the Sagaris.” and then walked off!”

Dan led the Sagaris project from design to production and worked in all departments relentlessly pushing his obsession for attention to detail. Dan would ensure everything fitted and worked better than the last model. At 23 years old this was no easy task with a factory full of northern, hard-nosed, set in their ways but of course very talented blokes. Dan designed the suspension, chassis, fuel system and active bonnet system to name a few. Dan loved driving of course and worked with a number of manufactures and vehicle dynamics experts to tune the ride and handling, vehicle dynamics, being damper travel, the damping, bumpstops, static chassis setting, tyre manufactures, tyre pressures, bump steer and geometry. Dan and the team tuned aerodynamics of the spoiler, venturi and splitter at Mira’s wind tunnel. Dan finished with road and track testing to develop one of the best TVR’s ever built. Dan took the prototype to meet Jeremy Clarkson for filming on BBC’s Top Gear.

“TVR was a fantastic place to work as I had a rare opportunity to be involved with all areas of the car and business, from hands on shop-floor, styling, mould and paint shop to production, chassis shop, design and of course road and track testing.”

Since TVR, Daniel has been offered work with LOTUS as a consultant in India, General Motors as Chief Vehicle Dynamics Systems Engineer (based at Milbrook test circuit), Bentley, Land Rover and Tesla.

In 2006 Dan set up his own engineering design and manufacturing business www.bmsdesignltd.co.uk and worked on contracts ranging from LMP race car suspension projects, to designing industrial laundry equipment and designing oil and gas rig pipe supports.

In 2007 Lawrence Tomlinson asked Dan to join Ginetta to develop the Ginetta G50 race car. The G50 was blank sheet designed and developed and 20 race cars were built in just 8 months.

Since Ginetta, Dan has continued to focus on developing his engineering business and in 2010 he is pushing BMS Design Ltd forward as a “one stop shop for all reverse engineering, design and manufacturing requirements” to all sectors from aerospace and motorpsorts to oil, gas and petrochemical and traditional manufacturing.

In his spare time he runs the BMS rally team www.boardmanmotorsport.com which has competed in various UK and International rallies over the past 10 years.  Boardman Motorsport also works with a number of customers running and preparing cars and would like to branch out into race team management for potential clients.

Dan has another exciting business venture which has been keeping him up late for the past 12 months. Its internet based and he claims it will help people communicate in a new way.

Dan is always keen to find new business partners and explore new territories.