TV Q&A: Engine Addict Jimmy De Ville on grease, grime and pushing limits

As a racing car driver, adventurer and soldier, 37-year-old Briton Jimmy de Ville has been tinkering with and rebuilding engines and vehicles his whole life. Now, the self-styled "extreme engineer" is coming to our small screens, in the DMAX show Engine Addict with Jimmy de Ville.

"It's an engineer who is prepared to push something not to the limit, but past the limit. I like to see how far I can push things. As I found out during the series, sometimes when you push it to what you think is the limit, you'll actually step over and encounter some interesting things … certainly, when you're strapping jet engines to a boat it's quite hair-raising.

"Testing that engineering in some of the hardest conditions in the world may mean you are an 'extreme engineer'. Challenging your engineering and engines in some of the hardest natural environments is an amazing thing … to have go well. But I've also engineered with the British Army, in some pretty extreme conditions."

"There is no one single iconic engine. Engines are like humans, they're all very different and they all do very different things.

"Throughout the show I track down six equally iconic engines, from a VW Beetle air-cooled engine to Rolls-Royce's Viper Turbojet engine to KTM's 125 SX engine, which won world championships. They've all done incredible things.

"For me the question is not what is the most iconic engine; it's what do we want to do with the engines. One great example is Frank Whittle, who came up with the idea to build a turbojet. It was completely incredible, and has given us global connectivity because we can now fly around the world in jet planes."