“I wish to say the R500 just isn’t a scary automobile to drive,” says Dan Webster, the earnestness in his Brummie tone completely betrayed by the glint in his eyes. “However it in all probability might be scary the primary time you drive it.”
The deadpan supply makes me snigger out loud, then quietly look inward. I get that Webster, who races an Elise and is the grasp engine tuner turned overhaul specialist behind Bromsgrove-based Excessive Efficiency Engineering, charges his product. I additionally get that, with a McLaren F1’s power-to-weight ratio and a wheelbase shorter than that of a VW Up, the heartbreakingly costly R500 goes to have some mischief about it. However genuinely scared? By just a little Elise? Be severe.
What I’m about to find is that the 330bhp HPE ‘Particular Automobiles R500’, with its polycarbonate home windows and plumbed-in fireplace extinguisher, is an S1 Elise in solely the loosest sense. True, it stops wanting being a silhouette racer, however solely simply. The acquainted physique is admittedly only a doe-eyed Computer virus for {hardware} and a level of obsessiveness extra frequent to motorsport. Past the donor automobile’s extruded-aluminium monocoque, which is stripped then replated, 80% of it’s bespoke.
Bespoke and hardcore. You’ll discover bladed anti-roll bars (discover how a plastic ruler’s vertical rigidity adjustments as you rotate it from flat to upright) that alone can rework the dealing with. There are additionally carbon-carbon brakes, and a power-distribution module that replaces the unique Elise’s rat’s nest of fuses and relays. This PDM permits for on-the-fly brake-bias adjustment and motorsport traction management, whereas safeguarding an engine hooked as much as extra sensors than a SpaceX Falcon 9.
The rose-jointed suspension can be fully new, and the brake system is re-engineered to retain the unique and sculptural pedal field however add twin grasp cylinders and a racing-style integral bias bar.
As for Webster (pictured under), the previous jail architect is a Burt Munro-type character. Solely as an alternative of trying to set pace information with an Indian Scout, he’s promoting rampant synaptic overload and diamond-edged driving pleasure for individuals who know what they’re doing in a trackday automobile.
The bike hyperlink is apt. It was in 1994 that Julian Thomson and Richard Rackham got down to create not a lot a sports activities automobile however a four-wheel model of their Ducatis. At 640kg the R500 weighs absolutely one Joe Marler lower than even the flyweight S1 Elise these males dropped at life. Its engine, constructed from the bones of a Honda K20 unit, additionally spins to 10,000rpm, and is loud sufficient to warrant an intercom and a cache of ear plugs within the tray the place the roll-cage passes via a carbonfibre sill. It’s honest to say that tin-tops with road-legal standing and self-cancelling indicators don’t get any extra ‘superbike’ than this.
Regardless of the wild premise, the R500 remains to be a little bit of a sleeper, particularly within the boring mild of our storage at M Sport’s Dovenby Corridor facility. That mild provides the voluptuous surfaces a moderately nondescript, development-mule look. It’s solely when the automobile is effortlessly wheeled into the sunshine that the magnificent carbonfibre physique, baked by Innovate Composites in Treorchy and with clamshells that weigh 5 kilos apiece, turns into apparent.
Sitting 60mm nearer to the street that a typical S1, on Nitron coilovers with customized valving – and with a brutal diffuser exploding from beneath the open-worked rear bumper, via which the four-into-one titanium exhaust is seen – the R500 has one thing of the Elise GT1 about it.
It actually does look very unique – whether or not it’s £375,000 unique is one other query – however we should always do not forget that modified Elises are famously straightforward to cock up in relation to dynamics. On this event I’ve purpose to imagine that’s unlikely. When Webster and I crossed paths at Anglesey within the autumn, and set at the moment’s occasions in movement, he took me for some passenger laps. Gifted drivers typically make recalcitrant automobiles look surprisingly pure however the R500 appeared to reside throughout the slender threshold between grip and slip purely out of selection; it was fierce however completely, thrillingly obedient.
My flip is now quick approaching. However first Webster finishes off what has been a Reith Lecture-worthy walkaround by explaining how 3D-printed engine mounts enable him to get a three-degree tilt on the mounts for the straight-cut canine ’field. This has higher aligned the driveshafts with out transferring the engine, stopping the CV joints from overheating – a typical Ok-series downside. This is only one of, oh, eight or ten examples of such intense, microscopic optimisation of the product.
Nestled in its neat bay, the K20 itself is bored to 2.2 litres, runs at 13:1 compression and has a customized light-weight metal crank, cast con-rods and pistons, particular person throttle our bodies plus “enormous valves and actually, actually scorching cams”. How scorching? Greater than 15mm of valve elevate is about what you’ll discover on a V10 F1 engine.
Having the highest finish in impact completely on high-cam sounds promisingly lurid however doesn’t bode nicely for low-speed drivability. Nonetheless, Webster insists the automobile will take wide-open throttle at 1500pm in sixth (spoiler: it does). He then produces an precise flywheel, seemingly from his pocket. It’s barely bigger than a Wagon Wheel and at 1100g weighs a few third what the usual half does. Engine, plus flywheel, plus twin-plate clutch is available in at 83kg, versus 105kg inventory. The valvetrain is so mild the engine might theoretically spin to just about 11,000rpm.
Folding your self into the R500 generates a couple of extra groans than the usual automobile on account of the T45 metal roll-cage. The door aperture is now hellishly tight however as soon as ensconced and strapped into the Tilletts, you get that unmistakable, addictive, primitive thrill: moderately than being bolted into the automobile, the automobile is extra an extension of your self. I don’t trip motorbikes however they’re certainly the benchmark for this sensation. The R500 can’t be too far behind, simply as Thomson and Rackham supposed.
You then sit there consuming within the filigree billet-aluminium gearshift mech. Subsequent is to prime the ignition through the sensible financial institution of controls on the sprint; flip to the TFT show on its fantastically machined plinth; and eventually you breathe life into the engine with a prod of a button on the Momo steering wheel, which might be borrowed from Lotus’s 1994 F1 automobile.
The second the K20 catches is the second the R500 stops being in any manner a cute S1 Elise. Individuals discuss in regards to the powertrain feeling ‘current’ in 911 GT3s with a single-mass flywheel, however the fizzing vitality of the R500 is off the chart by comparability.
Get going and the biting level is vindictively superb however this would be the final time you employ the clutch. Upshifts require solely a half-lift of the throttle as you navigate the H-pattern ’field, and on the way in which down the thought is to left-foot brake and blip the throttle along with your proper foot. It sounds dreamily easy, although my muscle reminiscence is so damned cussed in relation to H-pattern shifts that at the moment I’ll use a very good old style heel-and-toe downshift. It’s slower – significantly slower – however with out query a pleasant choice to have and means I can focus elsewhere.
For the primary few laps, ‘focus’ is the phrase. The brakes want numerous temperature, and this implies using them for some time. In the meantime, the plated LSD on this automobile (prospects can have the choice of a extra emollient Quaife unit) can be so tightly wound that, till you could have warmth within the tyres and dedication in your bones, it ploughs the nostril vast continuously.
Clearly this automobile has a window, and proper now I’m not in it. Additionally it is straightforward to lock the brakes, although as a result of the R500 is so mild and its tyres are so slender, there’s no screeching. The entrance axle merely goes mild and the white smoke pours over the perimeters of the windscreen, a few of it escaping via the wheel arch and into the cabin. It’s all very racing automobile.
However to the true query: is it really scary? Sure. Although solely in as far as you don’t wish to blow such an unimaginable engine to smithereens with an errant shift. Given the stratospheric rev ceiling, you’d really want to get issues horribly fallacious, and K20s, even ones this finely honed, are powerful cookies. However nonetheless, this waspish 2.2 feels so blueprinted, so particular and so ridiculously ‘motorsport’ that you just begin out treating it with child gloves. Which is perverse, as a result of what this driveline desires is a correct beasting.
It is advisable be able to administer precisely that. With automobiles as single-minded because the R500 there’s at all times a ‘clicking’ level. That is when operation ceases being a collection of bodily prompts and begins feeling extra instinctive and ethereal, like flying. Drawback is, it typically exists past the extent of dedication you inform your self you’re ready to go to when it is anyone else’s automobile. Particularly if it’s chassis #001 and, on an emotional degree, priceless.
Within the case of the R500 – a machine that doesn’t depend on downforce – the click level may be very excessive certainly. I can think about loads of folks going to nine-tenths and, hyper-stimulated however a bit unmoved, pondering they’ll name it a day. And this is able to be a travesty. Solely whenever you begin driving the R500 prefer it’s the very last thing you’ll ever do, does the mad thought that it would in some way be well worth the outlay enter your thoughts. Wine tragics who’ve dropped a mortgage cost on a bottle of ’82 Latour and had their boundaries redefined will know the sensation. This Lotus can do this.
It begins with the engine. The dearth of inertia manifests in its absurdly cutthroat responsiveness, after all, however the smoothness and pace of a well-executed 9500rpm upshift is what stays with you lengthy after the drive has ended.
For my cash the sunshine motion itself might have a contact extra steeliness to it – not weight, notice, however a hardness. Even so, right here you could have the gratifying violence and theatre of a sequential ’field with the sense of artisanal engagement of an H-pattern Group 5 historic. And the noise in these seconds earlier than every shift. Jesus. Earlier, Webster stated he at all times simply wished to drive automobiles that appeared like touring automobiles. That might clarify the R500’s scrumptious carbon airbox, nestled in opposition to the gold-lined bulkhead.
By the point you’re aware of this powertrain you’ll be going extraordinarily quick. Can’t be helped. Purple-line upshifts are a drug; full throttle the one permissible strategy when 205lb ft of peak torque arrives at 8600rpm. Additionally it is psychotically loud in right here and so quickly does the R500 achieve pace that you just’ll be busy – an upshift buys you about 20mph, which flat out takes the automobile solely a second or so to dispatch. The purpose of sensory overload, in the very best sense, typically feels shut at hand.
At this level I’d like to say one thing insightful in regards to the dealing with however in the end it’s every thing you want it to be. Within the pursuits of retaining the automobile entire, at the moment the chassis is softer on the again than Webster would normally have it and about 75% of most stiffness on the entrance. It’s nonetheless no hassle in any respect to steer the supple R500 on the throttle, increments of yaw blithely taken right here and there. I imagined the steadiness of energy and traction is likely to be awkwardly skewed nevertheless it isn’t.
Whereas this automobile is not precisely benign and I can think about it getting away from you quick on a moist observe, I can safely throw it round a bit, assured in its basic steadiness and the responses of the fragile, frothing, exact driving controls. It’s a grown-up Tony Kart: unfettered pleasure, and fairly completely different to the Analogue Automotive Supersport, being extra intense and grainy however maybe much less effusive. The driving expertise of the hyper-specialised R500 is, it goes with out saying, distinctive.
HPE plans to supply ‘lesser’ variations of this automobile within the type of the road-leaning R400 and R300, which is able to variously go with out the carbon physique, the roll-cage, the canine ’field and the three-way adjustable dampers. None might be remotely reasonably priced and people contemplating an R500 – for which the construct time is a 12 months – might want to get comfy with the chance value (assuming such issues concern them within the first place). That value extends to, for instance, a brand-new Manthey-tuned 911 GT3 RS. Or if the street-legal ingredient isn’t essential, half a grid of Radical SR1s.
It’s enormous cash, after all. Scary cash, you would possibly say. However that apart, on a day like at the moment, the R500 is a surprising little bit of equipment: a tiny prototype racer, tens of hundreds of hours within the making, and one man’s Elise-based tribute to obsessiveness and uncooked thrills.
HPE Particular Automobiles R500
Worth £375,000 Engine 4 cyls in line, 2200cc, petrol Energy 330bhp at 9000rpm Torque 205lb ft at 8600rpm Gearbox 6-spd guide Kerb weight 620kg 0-60mph 3.0sec (est) Prime pace 165mph
