If you were looking to buy a killer road-legal track car from a small company you’d never heard of it’d be reassuring to know that the man who designed it knew what he was doing. Rest assured, Nichols Cars has that covered.
CEO Steve Nichols is credited as the guy who introduced carbon fiber to Formula 1 and was the lead designer on the MP4/4 that Ayrton Senna used in 1988 to score the first of three F1 Drivers Championships. He also worked on F1 programs for Ferrari, Jaguar, Jordan, and Sauber. That’s a pretty solid CV and Nichols has drawn on some of that technical experience for his first car, though the inspiration comes from much further back in McLaren’s past.
In both style and name, Nichols’ N1A pays homage to McLaren’s M1A, the closed-wheel racer built between 1963 and 1968. The M1A raced in the hardcore Group 7 class in Europe in the mid-1960s as well as the United States Road Racing Championships in North America, where it evolved into the M1B and M1C for Can-Am competition.
The modern N1A’s slippery bodywork is undeniably similar but is fashioned from carbon fiber and is both wider and longer. It also rolls on much bigger 19-in-front and 20-in rear wheels wrapped in modern Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 rubber, while the aluminum chassis features double wishbones all around, plus standard traction control, and can be optioned with power steering and anti-lock brakes.
Related: This McLaren Elva Celebrates Bruce McLaren’s Iconic M1A From 1964
But the heart of the N1A is the 7.0-liter LS V8 located behind the rear seats and driving the rear wheels through a six-speed manual transmission with a classic open-gate shifter. Original M1As made between 310 and 550 hp (314-558 PS) but this one is modified to create rather more by Langford Performance Engineering, whose boss, Richard Langford, was one of the crew behind the Cosworth DFV that dominated F1 for years. The result is 650 hp (659 PS), which ought to be plenty given the sub-1000 kg ( 2,200 lb) curb weight.
Nichols plans to build no more than 100 cars, and that includes 15 – one for each of the McLaren MP4/4’s victories – fully loaded launch edition cars with the 7.0-liter V8. Customers looking to save money can outfit the regular production cars with a 460 hp (466 PS) Chevy LT1 or 520 hp (527 PS) version featuring throttle bodies. Prices are TBC, but whatever it costs, we want one.
