by Khris Bharath – December 25, 2025

Feature Exclusive: Inside the Minds Behind the HF-11 and ...

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Dubai has one of the highest concentrations of supercars and exotic cars in the world, and the glistening metropolis that rises out of the horizon in the desert has a way of reminding you of that almost immediately from the moment you land here. Sheikh Zayed Road, which runs right through the heart of the city, continues to have an ever-growing number of exotic and luxury car dealerships. From the more mainstream to the obscure, limited-run supercars and multi-million dollar one-off hypercars, there’s something for everyone here. Clearly, then, this is a region you can’t ignore if you operate in the performance car business.  I recently found myself sitting down on a Friday afternoon in late November at the Porsche DRVN Café on Bluewaters Island for a conversation that felt refreshingly out of step. I was about to spend just under an hour talking about discomfort, restraint, and why modern performance cars have quietly trained us to expect too much with too little input, with none other than Illya and Nikita Bridan, the Los Angeles-based twins behind Oilstainlab, who were visiting the region. Responsible for the radical-lookingHalf-11 and subsequently, the HF-11, I was particularly excited to meet the Bridan brothers because, long before automotive journalism became my career, I seriously considered automotive design, with ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, firmly on my radar, the same place where both Illya and Nikita also trained at. I was also coming fresh off the fifth edition of Icons of Porsche, where roughly 30,000 people from the GCC and beyond had gathered over two days to celebrate the German marque’s past, present, and future. Now, given that Oilstainlab’s very first creation, the Oilstainlab HF-11, does carry some Porsche influence, having a 996 GT1 Straßenversion from the Porsche Museum, casually sitting across the room from our first-floor table, was comforting to say the least, serving as the ideal backdrop for our conversation. The Porsche connection feels particularly relevant here, as the sports car maker itself currently has no direct successor to the 918 Spyder. There is no contemporary competitor in the current holy trinity space, and no direct answer to Halo cars from Ferrari and McLaren (F80 and W8). Yes, concepts like the 919 and Mission X showed us promise, and we did eventually get to see the street-legal 963 RSP, but that car is a one-off. In that absence, the HF-11 does not attempt to replace anything from Porsche. Instead, it serves up as a modern performance car that is mechanical, emotionally demanding, and deeply analog. Now, a lot has already been said about the HF-11, the earlier Half-11 prototype that went viral on social media, and the broader world and lifestyle that Oilstainlab is building around these cars. The imagery, the mythology, and the deliberate blur between past, present, and future. But what I wanted to understand, though, was more fundamental. What problem were they actually trying to solve? So I started there, with a question aimed squarely at intent. I began by asking how they would define the core purpose behind Oilstainlab and the HF-11 for a global duPont REGISTRY/collector car audience, and what driving experience they believe modern performance cars have lost. According to Nikita, Oilstainlab is mischievous and rebellious by design.  At its core, Oilstainlab rejects the idea of a conventional brand identity. “It isn’t really even a brand,” said Nikita. “It’s a culture or a point of view. The driver is always the hero.” That philosophy manifests in cars that are lightweight, difficult, and demanding.  Cars, in their view, should ask something from you. They should demand attention, skill, and intention. Effort matters. “Anything that’s easy, the brand really doesn’t partake in,” Nikita said. Driving should feel deliberate. You prepare yourself for it. You earn it. The HF-11’s cabin is all about mechanical connection, intentionally stripped of distractions and digital mediation. That idea made my next question inevitable. I asked what finally pushed them to walk away after spending 15 years working at major auto brands and OEMs, helping build what the future of cars was supposed to look like. He and his brother realized they did not actually like that future.  For Nikita, the breaking point came after achieving what had once been the dream. At General Motors Advanced Design, he worked on Corvette and Cadillac platforms and completed a Cadillac concept car. “That was the dream always as a kid,” he said. “Do a concept car. I did it.” What followed was less romantic. Pushing ideas inside a system that didn’t want to be pushed eventually got him fired. “We pushed too far,” Nikita said. “We had a talented team, and we were trying to move things where the corporation just wasn’t comfortable. Eventually, they just said, no more.” “That was the first sign.” The second came as AI tools, compressed timelines, and efficiency-first thinking began to dominate the industry. “This is not what we signed up for. We signed up for car design in the 1970s. Crazy concept cars. Instead, it became incredibly boring and incredibly regulated.” As for Illya, his breaking point came from structure rather than emotion. When I asked when the curtain was pulled back for him, he described sitting in meetings where engineering teams placed a fuel tank and a spare tire in the same location without anyone noticing the conflict. “As a designer, you have this bigger vision,” he said. “But you don’t have the power or control to influence it.” That disconnect eventually made working outside the system feel less like a gamble and more like a necessity. I moved on to how they balance creative freedom with global regulations now that the HF-11 is essentially production-ready. Regulations, Illya admitted, are one of the biggest challenges. “The rules don’t tell you what you can do,” he said. “They tell you what you can’t do. Everything in between is interpretation.” They vary by region, so Oilstainlab has focused heavily on the U.S. market and small-batch manufacturing exemptions. Being small helps. “We’re nimble. We can go between the rules.” Like motorsport, regulations define what you cannot do. That same mindset explains how Oilstainlab approaches storytelling. Now, if there’s something that most new names lack, it is a lineage and a pedigree to fall back on. It seems, though, that Oilstainlab is an exception, because from the onset, they are very deliberate with re-creating an alternate history around their brand that looks convincingly real. I was genuinely curious as to why it was important for the car to look real in period imagery. The answer traces back to their early years. After dropping out of high school at 14 and moving to Italy to study traditional coachbuilding, the brothers were later encouraged to relocate to California by Frank Stephenson, who is one of the most influential automotive designers of the modern era, known for shaping cars like the McLaren P1, Ferrari F430, Maserati MC12, the modern-day MINI, and the original BMW X5. California exposed them to Hollywood storytelling, myth-making, and the idea that narrative matters as much as form.  View this post on Instagram A post shared by Oilstainlab (@oilstainlab) In 2019, long before AI flooded social media, they asked a simple question. How do you make people stop and actually look? Their solution was to place the HF-11 in the 1960s, more specifically harkening back to CanAm Cars, Le Mans, and F1 race cars from the golden era of endurance motorsport and at the height of the jet age and space race. I even brought up Steve McQueen, who appeared in one of those images, which feels like it could have been pulled straight from a period motorsport film like Le Mans. If the car looked believable next to real period race cars, they knew the design was anchored. “It becomes a filter,” Illya said. “Do you believe or do you not believe?”  The original Half-11 prototype, a car that went viral on social media, embodied that thinking completely. Its visual impact was immediate. Raw, unfinished, and difficult to drive, it wasn’t designed to chase numbers. Placing the car next to period racers forced restraint. “Those cars are simpler. They’re more pure,” Illya said.  Aluminum construction also limited what could be done, and those limits became part of the identity of the Half-11. “If you can build anything, what do you build? It’s difficult.” The exercise also helped pull them out of the future-focused mindset designers often live in. The HF-11 that followed carries that same intent forward, but with the discipline required for production.  I followed up by asking when and why the HF-11 evolved from an LS-based V8 to a flat-six combustion engine alongside an electric option. Early on, packaging made a Porsche flat-six impossible. The sharply tapered rear end simply wouldn’t allow it. The LS V8 was a compromise; however, once the car was redesigned from scratch, Porsche engines came back into play. “We looked at every single Porsche powertrain,” Nikita said. “I was convinced a 928 would work, but the engine is just so big.” An air-cooled engine was announced first, but real-world feedback changed the plan. “Everyone’s like, I want to use this every day, and this engine scares me.” The solution became a water-cooled flat-six producing roughly 650 horsepower. It revs slightly lower, but delivers the same output, greater usability, and evocative sound. The exhaust itself was treated as sculpture. Compact, exposed, and visually honest, it reinforces how little excess exists in the overall form. At a time when sales of EVs are experiencing a slowdown not just in the mainstream segment, but even more so in the performance space, I wanted to find out more about their approach to the electric side of this story. They are unapologetic about their dislike of modern EVs, and have their own narrative of what an EV should be: fun. “Efficiency is not the goal for a sports car,” Nikita said. “If efficiency was the goal, we wouldn’t be doing any of this.”  “We hate that it’s silent. We hate that there’s no manual transmission. We hate that it’s heavy.” However, instead of rejecting the format outright, they reframed it historically. “The V8 engine was not cool when it came out,” Nikita said. “It was for luxury cars. It took decades before it became what we now associate with performance.” EVs, in their view, are at the same stage. Their EV solution uses ultralight battery pouch technology and a compact layout that avoids the skateboard problem. But most importantly, it still uses a manual transmission. “Everyone puts the batteries in the bottom,” Illya said. “That’s cool, but for a sports car, it’s terrible. You just raised the car six inches. The car’s fat and ugly.” The compact layout allows a manual transmission and preserves proportions. Sound is also something that is equally important in a performance car, something that is lacking in an electric vehicle. But the Bridans have a solution: “We hate anything fake. It has to be real.” Oilstainlab treats the EV system like an air pump, moving and managing hot air so sound becomes a byproduct of function. They are also developing a separate, undisclosed device purely for visual drama. “Everyone loves blowing flames out the back of the exhaust,” Illya said. “We’re not trying to save the planet. We’re building sports cars.” But by far, one of the most impressive aspects about the HF-11 is the swappable powertrain concept (yes, you can order both for the same car), which Oilstainlab refers to as Thunder-Volt, that allows one person to swap powertrains in roughly an hour. Combustion or electric in the same chassis, but a completely different experience. This dual-powertrain concept traces back to a childhood memory. “I was like 12 or 13,” Illya said, recalling Audi’s four-minute engine swap at Le Mans in 2000. “I was like, that’s the coolest thing ever.” In combustion form, the flat-six targets roughly 650 horsepower with a 10,000 rpm redline, while keeping the complete power unit near 990 pounds. The electric configuration pushes beyond 800 horsepower, revs past 13,000 rpm, and still targets a curb weight close to 2,000 pounds, all while retaining a six-speed manual transmission. Range is 325 miles, and you can top up the 80 kWh battery in about seven minutes. When I asked whether packaging both powertrains was difficult, the answer was yes; however, what surprised me was the split in terms of the demand. Roughly 80 percent of interest leans electric. Only 20 percent refuse it outright. “Everyone says V12 and manual. But when we talk to clients, no one wants a V12, and no one wants a manual. For an old car, it makes sense. For a new car, people just say, paddle shifts, and I’m good. In terms of driving dynamics, comparisons to Gordon Murray’s creations were addressed directly. “That’s the benchmark.” But the HF-11 takes a different route with narrow tires versus wide. “If you look at what a go-kart is,” Nikita said, “it’s a ton of tire, very lightweight, crazy steering angle. That’s fun.” The cars weigh about the same. We have downforce.  The HF-11 generates roughly 2,780 pounds of downforce, giving it a downforce-to-weight ratio that eclipses cars like the Porsche 918 Spyder, Ferrari F80, and Rimac Nevera. It even sits uncomfortably close to machines like the Mercedes-AMG One and Bugatti Bolide, despite weighing hundreds of pounds less.  Dimensionally, the HF-11 aligns more closely with the Porsche Carrera GT and GMA T.50 than with today’s oversized hypercars. Length, width, and ride height are all tightly controlled, reinforcing the idea that proportion itself is a performance tool. It explains why the car looks compact, tense, and purposeful, even sitting still. The carbon safety cell is engineered to withstand extreme loads, with stiffness and safety targets that exceed many modern hypercars.  Inside, there are direct, intentional references to old-school Porsche throughout, from the wooden gear knob that recalls the 917 and the CGT, to the five-pod gauge cluster. The helmet storage integrated into the doors exists because the windows don’t roll down. Removing that mechanism created space. “It was a nightmare.” But the result is intentional, because from the outside, the car looks tight and intimidating, but inside, you can stretch out.  I wrapped up by asking them to speak directly to someone considering the HF-11. The answer wasn’t a pitch. It was a warning. “You have to learn this car,” Illya said. “You make mistakes, you get scared, and over time you understand it. That process is the reward.” “Not everyone should be able to drive this well. And that’s the point.” The HF-11 demands effort. You learn it gradually. You make mistakes. You adapt. “Effort equals enjoyment.” This is not a garage queen. As for ownership, Oilstainlab structures HF-11 via two paths. The Maniac program is aimed at early participants who want deep involvement, offering long-term access to development, internal testing, global events, and future projects, along with the ability to choose a VIN and build slot. Maniac pricing locks the car at $1.35 million, paired with a $500,000 equity stake in the company, with a 25 percent deposit required to enter production, and deliveries targeted for the first cars between 2027 and 2028.  A Standard allocation is available for those who prefer a more traditional purchase process, requiring a $100,000 deposit to enter the waitlist and a 25 percent deposit to secure production, with pricing currently set at $1.85 million, optional Thunder-Volt dual-powertrain capability priced at $500,000, and deliveries expected from 2028 onward. We finally touched on production, which is limited to 25 units globally. It goes without saying that each car is also highly customisable with each commission centered around a specifc theme. The carbon tubs will be built in North Carolina, then shipped north for final assembly in Canada. Combustion testing is slated to begin in March, with the electric version following roughly six months later. If you place a deposit, deliveries are expected to start around mid-2027, typically 12 to 18 months afterward. The HF-11 aims to retain as much of that character of the Half-11 prototype as possible, all while acknowledging limits. The carbon chassis also allows multiple variants, including a potential aluminum-bodied commission for the right client. Long-term, the HF-11 exists to establish credibility. “The first car is basically to show that we can build a very compelling product. From there, the goal is to move back toward something simpler and more accessible. A grassroots car for enthusiasts. Built sustainably. Without burning capital for the sake of scale.” by Khris Bharath I ran into the Bridan twins again, later that weekend on Sunday, at the opening day of the 1000 Mille Miglia. Away from prototypes and production schedules, our conversations picked up exactly where we left off. Classic cars, design history, and more. The quiet satisfaction of making something difficult on purpose. In a region overflowing with effortless excess, the HF-11, being the world's lightest and only powertrain agnostic (ev or gas) supercar, should undoubtedly stand out, and I can’twait to see what the brand has in store next. In my opinion, a famous quote from Clarkson here sums up the HF-11 perfectly in my opinion, a 1960s throwback without the 60s drawbacks. View All Supercars and Exotics for Sale Images: Oilstainlab