RE: Elemental RP-1 for Goodwood debut

RE: Elemental RP-1 for Goodwood debut

Monday 2nd June 2014

Elemental RP-1 for Goodwood debut

Yes, it's another Brit newcomer promising a new take on the minimalist road/track car thing



When a press release turns up out of the blue announcing another new start-up British road/track car it's impossible not to think back to Sniff Petrol's spot-on cut'n'paste parody of such pronouncements. But let's try not to be too cynical, even if the Elemental RP-1 does seem to tick an awful lot of the boxes on Sniff's press release template...

Sequential 'box, harnesses ... looks racy
Sequential 'box, harnesses ... looks racy
The facts, as we have them from Elemental's website, the press release and a few abstract computer renderings: The RP-1 would appear to be a lightweight (c. 450kg at best it's claimed) road legal track car with no roof, a 280hp Ford Ecoboost engine, sequential gearbox, the inevitable patented carbon fibre tub and ambition to "completely update the traditional idea of an occasional-use road and track car."

Thing is, there are quite a few other cars out there with the same goal. Caterham continues to spin new variants off the endlessly adaptable Seven theme, ever more mental Ariel Atoms build on an established fan base for the skeletal Honda-powered rocketships, Radical can build you a road legal track car complete with proper downforce and real racing car vibes while KTM has its wild-looking X-Bow range and, for the wealthy/unsociable the BAC Mono offers perhaps the most purist vision of the breed with stunning design and bonkers performance. That's before you factor in the Vuhl 05 and Zenos also following a similar path and closer to production reality.

Style hasn't been forgotten it'd seem
Style hasn't been forgotten it'd seem
Elemental boasts the expected roster of motorsport and engineering experience and, from the renders, an eye for style too. It'll need a USP to stand out in the above crowd though, the most distinctive feature we could pick out being the seating position which raises the driver's feet up to create room for underbody aero and contrive proper racing car sensations. Other intriguing sounding features include a 'cassette installation' to enable 'further engine options' to be 'easily fitted'. The car, built in aluminium for the first XP1 prototype last year and then in carbon XP2 form, also features fully adjustable suspension and a programmable dash display linked to built-in cameras to replay your on-track heroism at a later date. Boldly Elemental promises the RP-1 is the first of a range of cars it will build.

The car will be unveiled at the Goodwood Festival of Speed at the end of the month and while pricing has yet to be disclosed looking at the spec it would be extremely surprising if it were any less than £50K. If Elemental offer us any more information on that we'll update you as soon as we hear.

[Sources Sniff Petrol, Elemental Cars]

 

 

Author
Discussion

r11co

Original Poster:

6,244 posts

229 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
Nice! Include the Sniff link to the "PRESS RELEASE HELP FOR NEW SUPERCAR MAKERS" at the bottom of the article to save some commentard doing it.
hehe

jeffw

845 posts

227 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
Looks very much like what you would expect a BAC Duo to look like. Two seaters will sell better than the single seater BAC Mono.

RTH

1,057 posts

211 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
When companies like Lotus are down to under 300 UK registrations a year (40 years ago that was 5000) It does make you wonder just where all the customers are going to come from for all these different makes of track car. They are all similar at similar prices.
Now if someone would make a minimalist, no fancy expensive kit, light car - in inexpensive materials, yet beautiful (think modernised Ferrari Dino shape) small road sports car with say 150bhp mid mounted roadcar powertrain at under £25,000- maybe even part kit as Lotus did in 1960s/early 70s with say 40hrs of final assembly- that would be interesting.
We keep seeing ambitious exotic car start ups that just fade away - all the massive effort is wasted.

justboxsters

135 posts

165 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
RTH said:
When companies like Lotus are down to under 300 UK registrations a year (40 years ago that was 5000) It does make you wonder just where all the customers are going to come from for all these different makes of track car. They are all similar at similar prices.
Now if someone would make a minimalist, no fancy expensive kit, light car - in inexpensive materials, yet beautiful (think modernised Ferrari Dino shape) small road sports car with say 150bhp mid mounted roadcar powertrain at under £25,000- maybe even part kit as Lotus did in 1960s/early 70s with say 40hrs of final assembly- that would be interesting.
We keep seeing ambitious exotic car start ups that just fade away - all the massive effort is wasted.
THIS!

justboxsters

135 posts

165 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
RTH said:
When companies like Lotus are down to under 300 UK registrations a year (40 years ago that was 5000) It does make you wonder just where all the customers are going to come from for all these different makes of track car. They are all similar at similar prices.
Now if someone would make a minimalist, no fancy expensive kit, light car - in inexpensive materials, yet beautiful (think modernised Ferrari Dino shape) small road sports car with say 150bhp mid mounted roadcar powertrain at under £25,000- maybe even part kit as Lotus did in 1960s/early 70s with say 40hrs of final assembly- that would be interesting.
We keep seeing ambitious exotic car start ups that just fade away - all the massive effort is wasted.
THIS!

Burnham

3,668 posts

258 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
'Commentard'.

Brilliant. I'm using that.

breezer42

132 posts

150 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
RTH said:
When companies like Lotus are down to under 300 UK registrations a year (40 years ago that was 5000) It does make you wonder just where all the customers are going to come from for all these different makes of track car. They are all similar at similar prices.
Now if someone would make a minimalist, no fancy expensive kit, light car - in inexpensive materials, yet beautiful (think modernised Ferrari Dino shape) small road sports car with say 150bhp mid mounted roadcar powertrain at under £25,000- maybe even part kit as Lotus did in 1960s/early 70s with say 40hrs of final assembly- that would be interesting.
I agree, but toyobaru tried this and nobody bought the thing.

TartanPaint

2,981 posts

138 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
RTH said:
Now if someone would make a minimalist, no fancy expensive kit, light car - in inexpensive materials, yet beautiful (think modernised Ferrari Dino shape) small road sports car with say 150bhp mid mounted roadcar powertrain at under £25,000- maybe even part kit as Lotus did in 1960s/early 70s with say 40hrs of final assembly- that would be interesting.
That sounds very much like the S1 Elise to me, right down to the Dino influence and 40 hours spent finishing Lotus' job for them. biggrin

thundercolo

73 posts

171 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
We all agree that all these track day cars are way too similar and they will struggle to sell because they dont belong to a known brand, they wont have a huge publicity campaign and they dont offer anything new. I saw this after the KTM, Ariel, etc appeared and I started to work on something funnier, this is what I came up with:

https://vimeo.com/90207054

I sent it to Lotus, Caterham and a few more and they never answered, not even criticising it. I'm posting it here in hope that somebody will tell me how stupid it is.

bencollins

3,486 posts

204 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
Looks good so far, best of British.

Inclined to agreed with above comments - what people want is a kit car.
Basically you can get a mechanically newish second hand car for £2k like a Mondeo or Nissan Micra turbo.
Strip and bolt on to a beach buggy style race tub GBanhnam-style. Job jobbed.
There's plenty of people who would never consider spending more than £20k (me for one).

Sometimes I wonder also about Sports car ownership saturation point.
Unlike Mondeos (bad example cos they hang around for eons and wont die) they never seem to disappear.
E.g. nobody scraps an Aston Martin but they keep making 'em. A dripping tap fills a bath etc, especially a RHD bath.


To raise the reverse viewpoint, there's a big bored world out there, maybe a "British lightweight" track car will become a niche of its own.
Maybe they should set up a franchise with a choice of ten of them, e.g. Radicals, Westfields, Mono's, this, etc all under one roof in each Euro/US/world conurbation.

ecs0set

2,471 posts

283 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
thundercolo said:
We all agree that all these track day cars are way too similar and they will struggle to sell because they dont belong to a known brand, they wont have a huge publicity campaign and they dont offer anything new. I saw this after the KTM, Ariel, etc appeared and I started to work on something funnier, this is what I came up with:

https://vimeo.com/90207054

I sent it to Lotus, Caterham and a few more and they never answered, not even criticising it. I'm posting it here in hope that somebody will tell me how stupid it is.
Too radical for Radical.

anonymous-user

53 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
Less than £50K?? in low volumes, with a carbon tub and sequential gearbox? Er, NO.

Considering a relatively "mass produced" Exige is £50k, with an ally tub that the design and tooling costs were paid off on back in about 1853............

anonymous-user

53 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
Oh, and

elemental said:
When I was thinking of buying a track-day and competition car, having looked extensively and driven a number of existing cars, I realised that each one was compromised in some way: from the difficulty of set-up to the detailed design, they were simply not as good as they could be.
When they actually get around to making a real car, and more importantly, selling them for a profit, i suspect they will find out quite quickly about "compromises" and "being not quite as good as they could be"...........

oldtimer2

728 posts

132 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
Earlier this year Elemental were knocking on the doors of potential business angels/venture capitalists looking for start up capital. Have they been successful and are now seeking to attract actual customers? Or is the FoS appearance another aspect of the fund raising programme? I agree with others that the market for such products is beginning to look crowded.

JaseB

854 posts

260 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
I think it looks very cool and has the right recipe, good luck to them.

I can't help thinking there's still a lot of money out there in petrolhead land and they probably don't have to sell that many (1 or maybe 2 a month?!) to stay afloat and move on from there.

Just my 2p worth obvs.

3WheelDrift

14 posts

132 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
Given that the BAC is pretty much £100k with a tubular steel chassis and virtually the same spec otherwise I suspect you'll have to put a 1 in front of that price assessment.

TartanPaint

2,981 posts

138 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all

smilo996

2,755 posts

169 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
Great they have added a cassette installation for all those discarded C60 and C90's.

Seems like the UK is going all a bit Italian bike manufacturers. More and better exotic fare for the punter...cash flow problems, rescue, bust, rescue.

How about a £20K track and everyday car? Might sell many more.

Ex Boy Racer

1,151 posts

191 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
I'm no journalist, but-

Either support and publicise, or

Don't give it any space if you don't think it's sensible.

Printing everything they send and then doing a 'but we're so smart we think it's nonsense' cynical put-down seems to be pretty two-faced

MarkMiwurds

1 posts

117 months

Monday 2nd June 2014
quotequote all
I think the guys at Zenos Cars may be on to something ....... www.zenoscars.com ....a £25k road/track car with a carbon tub and performance that matches the looks.......haven't placed a deposit yet but I hear a demo is due soon so perhaps a test driving is in order! Anyone know if these guys are serious?