When stock market moneymaker James "Jim" Glickenhaus announced the Pininfarina-penned
Glickenhaus P4/5
back in 2006, it rather stunned a few people.
Including none other than Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo. The Prancing Horse is more officious than a regional nightclub bouncer when it comes to controlling its branding, so when di Montezemolo said the car deserved official recognition as a product of Maranello, things got serious.
We're promised a beautiful body for this too
P4/5 Competizione
followed racing at the N24 - based on a 430 GT2 due to racing regs, rather than the Enzo underpinnings of the road car - but since then the Glickenhaus trail has gone quiet.
By this time next year, Glickenhaus will have made the move to full-on constructor, as the New Yorker is set to build his very own carbonfibre chassis (that's chassis with a "ch"): the SCG 003. And it's quite the refreshing approach.
Unlike the McLaren P1, the LaFerrari and Porsche 918 Spyder , instead of chasing massive performance through increasingly complex technology, Glickenhaus is going old-school, saying, "Could it be that less is really more? That's what our new road car is going to be. Lighter, smaller, simpler and very beautiful."
A carbonfibre backbone is as good a place to start as any if lightness is your goal.
Can we have a beautiful name too?
Like the P4/5 project, former Pininfarina head of special products Paolo Garella will oversee the project, to be designed and built by Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus (hence the SCG badging).
"Our goals are similar power-to-weight as my Ferrari P3/4 and something that is a new, forward design where it's three wings are integrated into the form, like a Porsche 959's rear wing.
"I'm calling it the 003 as it's our third one off and it will have three integrated wings. It will be Dino Competizione sized. We're thinking carbonfibre tub, a twin-turbo V6 and a very sexy shape."
So a modern-day Dino that weighs around 810kg with roughly 430hp - sounds like Ambrosia (no, not the custard...) to us; closer to the car the Alfa Romeo 4C should have been.
On the subject of that engine - reportedly 3.5 litres in capacity - twin blowers and six cylinders in a V that can produce around 430hp points towards Ford's American-market Ecoboost engine.
Dino tribute will use a V6 and be c.800kg
Of course, some of that total power output could come from a hybrid system, as Glickenhaus has experimented with KERS before on the P4/5 Competizione.
"At the 'ring we were able to make 50 seconds of 50hp by recovering energy. We used GPS to trigger the system for a four-second burst on the next full throttle application after hard braking. Year-on-year we were 15 seconds a lap faster."
However, his desire to go back to basics and assertions that hybrid systems have added more cost and complexity means we're not holding our breath.
We'll know more in due course, before the road and race versions of the SCG 003 make their debuts at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show, after which they'll be packed off to Nurburg for the car's first N24. Lets hope it's ready in time.