Mercedes-Benz Design Creates Surfboards For Garrett McNamara

In the last few months, the engineers and designers involved with the Mercedes-Benz Design Center in Sindelfingen have been working on a joint project for the Hawaiian surfing legend and world record holder Garrett McNamara.

The result of that project consists of four customized surfboards, which McNamara will use to break his own record of riding the largest wave ever at Nazaré, in Portugal.

As some of you know, 46-year old Garrett McNamara is a legendary professional big wave surfer, known for surviving a gigantic wave at Jaws Beach, in Maui, riding tidal waves from calving icebergs in Alaska and currently holding the Guinness World Record for riding the largest ever wave in Portugal.

The four surfboards were both designed and engineered by McNamara himself together with the designers and engineers from Sindelfingen, as the following video will cheerfully depict.

All of them were subjected to extreme testing in the Mercedes-Benz wind tunnel, with the Germans being responsible for the design and the American surfer for their shape and weight.

Each of the boards was tailor-made to McNamara's height and weight and his exact specifications, with the rather odd cooperation searching to identify the perfect materials and weight distribution of weight on the board.

The surfer tested them for the first time from 2 to 13 February at Nazaré, in Portugal, with Mercedes-Benz engineers being on sight to measure the speeds and other telemetry data, like on a racing car. We don't know about you, but we're now up for a surfer movie.