![]() ![]() Naturally, too, the Mazda passenger-car engine is considerably heavier than the motorcycle engines in conventional sports racers. The hubs and wheel carriers on all four ends are stock pieces from the Cadillac CTS, chosen because they'll last a long time in this application and because you'll be able to get replacements from any GM dealer. The cage surrounding the driver is both complex and heavy for safety. The bodywork is made of 11 separate pieces to facilitate affordable crash repair. Jeremy Croiset, the NASA official who has been responsible for much of the car's conception and development, explains that it's all about toughness. The NP01, by contrast, will scale an estimated 1500 pounds without a driver. Some SCCA sports racers require ballast to meet competition weights of under 1000 pounds-including the driver. Élan says all of the engines will make the same power within a pony or two, and the time between rebuilds should be enough to accommodate several seasons of enthusiastic racing.įinally, there are the inextricably linked issues of curb weight and durability. In the NP01, it's a free-revving charmer that sounds appropriately savage when it's winding out to its 7000-rpm redline. This engine appears in various forms on the street, everywhere from older Mazdas to the current rental-car-spec Ford Focus. The next difference is behind the driver instead of a bored-out 1500-cc Suzuki Hayabusa or 1000-cc Kawasaki Ninja engine spinning itself nearly to death between rebuild intervals of 40 hours or less, there's a factory-sealed Mazda MZR 2.0-liter four-cylinder that is tuned for a modest 185 hp. This is a nod both to safety and to aesthetics, as the fashion at Le Mans has decidedly turned away from open-air prototypes and toward claustrophobic affairs like the current Audi R18. ![]() The first one is obvious: Unlike the vast majority of sports racers, the NP01 is a closed-cockpit design with room for just one person beneath its insubstantial gullwing access flaps. But the NP01 differs from these sports racers in some very important respects. In recent years, these hybrids of formula cars and sports cars have frequently posted the fastest lap times at the SCCA Runoffs national championships. Readers with SCCA competition licenses in their wallets will recognize the NP01 as a riff on the sports racer, not unlike the Radical SR3 or the Stohr WF1. The idea is simple: Make a bona fide race car, not for race-car drivers, but for enthusiast drivers of the future, who will likely find their passion restricted to the growing number of "country club" private racetracks across the United States. As a $72,500 unassembled kit complete with engine and transmission, it's relatively affordable-competitive with stock Corvettes and Porsches. The National Auto Sport Association, the well-known amateur-racing sanction that came up with the idea for the NP01, calls it a "prototype," as does Élan Motorsports, the car's builder. Something like the NASA Prototype Élan NP01. Something that will challenge him on a personal level, something he can wrestle the way Jacob fought the angel thousands of years ago. What's waiting for him? Something that doesn't have a robot at the controls. The man gets out, still holding his helmet bag. From there into what you recognize as a paddock. Is the occupant reading? Asleep? Then it pulls into a parking lot. It's peeling off onto a side road, still moving with that inhuman precision, perfectly centered on the tarmac, maintaining a constant and distinctly conservative speed. No, that one, the one carrying the man with the helmet bag and the self-assured look. Continuing on their automated, perfect way.įollow that one. But then you notice that some of the cars are stopped, disgorging passengers. You'd be forgiven for thinking it's the end of humanity. The distances between them are identical. Now you can see the cars, zipping along on the freeways, gridlocked on the urban streets. The planet swells to fill our viewpoint as we tear out of the black, into the blue of the carbon-choked upper atmosphere. Past the Lagrange point L1, where a few maverick entrepreneurs have built their tourist space stations. Start with the earth, as seen from the moon. Just our future, the one that approaches a little faster than we'd prefer: Not the optimistic future of Gernsback, not the gritty dystopia of Gibson. ( From the May 2016 issue of Road & Track) ![]()
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