Concept Climax
Lightweight sports car makes debut at Goodwood
Concept Climax, the lightweight sports car project started by three (and now down to two) former students of the Royal College of Art’s car design course, is expected to go into production by the middle of next year.
The Climax made a last-minute debut appearance at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, and while its overall shape – inspired by the Cooper-Climax F1 car of the 1950s – remains true to the original concept car, a number of its details have changed.
Most fundamental amongst these is the fact that the bodywork is now aluminium rather than composite, while earlier plans for a lightweight V8 similar to that in the Caparo T1 have been ditched. Instead the car currently features a 320bhp version of the turbocharged flat-four from the Impreza STI, driving the rear wheels through a Prodrive-supplied six-speed gearbox. The engine choice is still subject to ongoing discussions, though, but whatever the final outcome it will be engineered to run on E85 bioethanol.Weight has also risen on the path to production, up from a predicted 546kg to 800kg, but the car remains ‘a real flyer’, according to Concept Climax’s Simon Long.
Production engineering is about to begin (for which several investors are coming on board) and Long is being realistic about the scale of the task. ‘We now have to focus on important small things like the door hinges,’ he says.
