Rear-drive 490hp AIM EV Sport 01 due at FoS
Designed by the man responsible for the R35 GT-R and built by the company that used to make LMP1 V10s...
At first, I thought this was something new from Zagato. And the fact that I thought that is a compliment to the man who designed the AIM EV Sport 01, which is due to make its dynamic debut at Goodwood in a couple of weeks. And that man is Shiro Nakamura, who heads an independent design company called SN Design Platform. You may not have heard of Nakamura, but you’ll know his past work from the years when he headed up Nissan’s design team. It was there that he oversaw the designs of some PH favourites – I’m talking cars such as the Nissan Cube, Leaf, Juke and Qashqai. Okay, perhaps not the most notable Nissans for petrol heads, but he also oversaw the styling of the R35 GT-R. That’s a genuine PH icon, for sure.
You may not have heard of the manufacturer, either. But AIM has been operating since 1998 – the year PH was born, coincidentally – so it’s a properly established business rather than just another start-up. We’re talking proper specialist automotive engineering firm, too. It built the 5.5-litre V10 that powered the LMP1 Team Oreca Matmut AIM entry in 2010. That came fourth overall, by the way, making it the highest-placed petrol car when the Audi TDIs diesels were dominating.
The AIM EV Sport 01 doesn’t have a tuneful 650hp V10 that revs to 8,000rpm, though. It’s AIMs first ground-up creation – that is, its first complete car – and uses its own electric motor, labelled the APM200. Despite the lack of sound, there’s still something to cheer about here, as Chief Executive Officer, Yukinori Suzuki explains: ‘The vision for the AIM EV Sport 01 was fast, and enjoyable to drive, while the mainstream trend for EVs is AWD, the character of this car called for a RWD configuration.’ There’s something reassuring about hearing words such as ‘enjoyable to drive’ and ‘character’ when it comes to the new breed of electric cars, and a company that isn’t focusing on lap time at the expense of a playful (we hope) rear-driven chassis is fine by us.
Mr. Suzuki will be hoping not too playful, mind, because he’ll be the one driving the EV Sport 01 up the Hill at the FoS next week. Those will be timed runs in the ‘First Glance’ category. So yes, this is a working prototype rather than one of those design studies. It started out as a concept, mind you. That was all about advertising AIM’s wares and focusing the spotlight on the EV powertrains it’s developing – ones it wants to sell to the big automotive players. However, since the EV Sport 01 was revealed last April, it’s generated enough interest that AIM is doing ‘a feasibility study for a limited series production run’. If that happens, and it’s successful, it’s not ruled out the idea of building more of its own cars as well.
AIM has also shared some of the technical specs for the car, and they make interesting reading. As we said, the EV Sport 01 is rear-wheel drive but has two APM200 motors working together to create torque vectoring across the rear axle and a combined 490hp and 546lb ft. Now that’s not extreme by today’s EV standards, but then it doesn’t have to be. Yes, the EV Sport 01 has a big, and likely heavy, laminate lithium battery – it’s 81kWh split into four modules – but the overall car is relatively light. 1,425kg is the quoted weight.
Partly that’s because of the EV Sport 01’s compactness. It's 3,900mm long and 1,200mm high, with a wheelbase of 2,400mm. To put that into context, it’s similar to an Alfa Romeo 4C, although at 1,900mm wide, the EV Sport 01 is, thankfully, not quite as wide as that. Then there’s its mix of materials. The interior ‘bathtub’ is carbon fibre and so is the bodywork, but the press release also talks about an aluminium ‘multi-tubular frame with double-wishbone front and rear suspension system’. Presumably, that’s the subframes extending fore and aft of the carbon tub. The rubber it’s on is wide but not extreme – the front tyres are 235/35 ZR20 with 275/30 ZR20 at the back.
There are so many manufacturers coming to market with something new that it's easy to brush over yet another one you've never heard of. Everyone, it seems, is hoping to catch the crest of the EV wave and make a splash with yet another static, prototype or supposedly production-ready car. But with a bona fide designer and a company with a credible backstory spanning 25 years in automotive engineering, perhaps this little-known Japanese manufacturer is one of the ones to watch. It’s certainly one of the designs pretty enough to look at twice.
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