I've
been fortunate over the last five years or so to own some pretty
nice cars. I've had a couple of Wesfields and a 4.5 litre
TVR Cerbera. They were all pretty quick, especially the TVR,
but they've all come and gone and the garage is now empty apart from
my 17 year old Ford Capri. The Capri comes out in nice weather
(it's just on its second set of tyres at 25000 genuine miles) but,
as you can imagine, it doesn't quite give the same thrill as the
TVR.
Five years ago I spent an amazing hour in the company of Ted Marlow (Ultima Sports, Hinckley) and one yellow company demonstrator GTR. Never heard of the GTR ? Well it's shown on the left. It has 600+ bhp, 13 inch wide tyres and it's road legal. Think 0 to 100 in just over 5 seconds (yes, 100 !) and 230 mph. It's officially the world's fastest supercar ! Oh, and one last thing, you build it yourself.
If you sat a 7 year old down and asked him to "spec" a fast car he might just design the GTR. Amazing looks, huge power and fat tyres. Gullwing doors, whopping exhaust pipes and 6 point racing harnesses. And a big wing on the back.
Sat 15th July 2006
was another amazing hour at Ultima, and this time I left only after
placing an order for the first stages of the car. I've no
real engineering experience, but have the time, space and patience
to give it a crack. The parts are not cheap but then again
you're not going to fit Ford Escort brakes on a 200mph car, are
you ? It's value for money when you think that anything close
to this fast would cost 10 times as much. And nothing on Planet
Earth looks like an Ultima GTR !
I'm not going to wax lyrical about the GTR for too long but just take a look at the business end of this car. A 6.3 litre purpose built American Speed racing engine, 600+ bhp, F1 sized tyres. If this doesn't stir something in your loins then go see the doctor !!
On the road the GTR is simply explosive. It's very driveable, the suspension is smooth, and it can "burble" along in 5th without the pops and misfires you might expect when a race engine is not under load. But one press of the throttle, as Ted demonstrated, gives linear acceleration like you have never felt. In Hinckley town centre, men stared in awe and small kids dropped their ice creams ...
As I type
this (Sun 23rd July) I have 9 weeks before the chassis arrives and
I have started to "tool up" and read as much as I can
about the GTR build, both from Ultima's build manual (on CD) and
also from Chris James's excellent build site ("CJ" has
built two Ultimas to date and has documented every stage of the
build). I'm going to document my build too.