Review: Stilo WRC 8860 Des

26th April 2010

By Anthony Peacock

It’s not very often that you come across something cool and trendy that goes by the name of ‘Des’.

There are a few possible exceptions: British sports presenter (and legend) Desmond Lynam perhaps. Or maybe Des from ‘Neighbours’.

But now you have to be neither a devotee of cricket nor a connoisseur of Australian soap opera to appreciate the name ‘Des’ in all its glory. We present a piece of kit that is so cool even Kimi ‘The Iceman’ Raikkonen has one.

Meet the Stilo WRC 8860 Des helmet, made in Italy and distributed via Wales thanks to Nicky Grist: the late Colin McRae’s co-driver who is now the official distributor of Stilo products in the UK.

The helmet’s snappy moniker comes from the fact that it meets the FIA 8860 safety standard: the impact regulation used in Formula 1, where drivers think nothing of headbutting concrete walls at 300kph.

Stilo was the maker of the first open-face helmet conforming to this standard, introduced in 2004, and this year it’s compulsory for all Priority 1 and Priority 2 rally drivers. Next year, anybody wanting to start a WRC event will need an 8860 standard helmet, so just like an evening out in a cheap night club it will be a question of coming prepared with your own personal protection.

What makes the Stilo helmet particularly good is the fact that it sails through safety standards with more numbers than Einstein had letters after his name while maintaining a surprising degree of lightness. The first time you put it on, it may cause inadvertent whiplash: you lift your head up expecting a much heaver weight than you actually get.

From the technical side, the helmet has everything that made Stilo a market leader, including stylish looks that incorporate a Darth Vader style mouthpiece.

There’s more black carbon fibre than you would find in an AMG Mercedes: in fact the whole shell is pure carbon in order to optimise both strength and weight. The intercom system detaches with the simple turn of an (all-alloy) screw, meaning that the headphones can be exchanged both quickly and efficiently.

This is exactly the sort of slick product that you would expect from an Italian brand that specialises in hard-core military hardware as well as the even more extreme environment of rallying. The company’s owner, Ludovico Fassitelli, was a former rally driver who came up with the Stilo concept when he discovered that no commercially available helmet suited his exact needs. So he made his own instead.

Necessity is more often than not the mother of invention, and Stilo illustrates that idea perfectly.

In fact, the only thing that’s not quite perfect about the Stilo WRC 8860 Des is the price. In the UK it costs £1790.00 plus VAT. But there are some areas in life, such as vintage Champagne, where it makes no sense to economise. Your head protection is another.

For more information please visit http://www.nickygrist.com or http://www.stilo.it.