The Brits have a long history of making excellent lightweight sports cars, a class of vehicles they led for decades and are still at the forefront of today – the Ariel Atom epitomizes the philosophy, as do Lotus, Caterham or more recently BAC.
New names pop up every day, though, and the madder they promise to be, the more hype builds around them, so the upcoming Elemental RP-1 should be on your list of cars to see in the near future.
Elemental is a Surrey, UK-based company, recently set up, that has announced it will be bringing its first ever model, the RP-1, to the Goodwood Festival of Speed, set to take place later this month.
Reasons to be excited for this new sports car have to do with numbers: extremely low weight of 450 kg (~990 lbs), 276 hp from a Ford-sourced 2.0-liter EcoBoost engine, a carbon fiber tub, motorsport-derived aero setup that can provide up to 200 kg of downforce (at 160 km/h or 100 mph) and an equally motorsport-esque customizable dash display.
The result is 500 hp/ton, 800 Nm/ton and (unspecified) performance numbers on par with supercars powered by engines three times the size. However, its rivals will still be the lightweight bunch, which aside from the British names mentioned in the first paragraph also has to deal with Austria’s KTM X-Bow, the new Vuhl 05, the Zenos among others.
By Andrei Nedelea
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