Off we shoot. No danger of an embarrassing pit-lane stall, as the clutch-brain takes care of things in response to my input of revs. Down the pit-lane, out into the first corner, a sharp left that opens into a broader right. It's a fascinating track, Laguna Seca, with plenty of rises and falls, and corners that tighten or open out. A bit like a good road in that sense, though the surface is almost supernaturally smooth and even.
Whatever speed any of these corners brings the car down to (there are slow and very fast ones), its engine can catapult it out of them with colossal vehemence. Early in the morning the track is damp, yet there's still huge traction. Later in the day I have another go in the dry, and simply don't have the bottle to locate the limit. Reserving full throttle for the straights just seems a more sane strategy.
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| Edgy design was penned by Brian Nielander |
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It's a tsunami of forward rush. The torque is always there, whatever the revs. A near-bottomless pit of dark unfathomable elastic surge. It's not a high-revving, strung-out engine like the Porsche Carrera GT's. In fact, the noise, from within the cabin, is a mild disappointment. The V12 revs only to 6300, and the turbos muffle any blare. More important, the noise doesn't change in quality as you feed in revs and throttle. In the European hypercars, that varying aural feedback is a vital part of man-machine interaction. Still, this is very much a prototype and obviously there's plenty of scope for making acoustic adjustments to intake and exhaust systems. Besides, the notion of seamless, fussless torquey urge is perhaps more in the spirit of what an American supercar should be about. No point in slavishly copying what Ferrari and Porsche do. To comprehensively out-perform them while barely seeming to try is a bit of a party-trick. Oh and you should hear the noise from the outside. A deep thunder that makes your chest wall vibrate. It's 'just about legal' say the engineers.
Upshifts happen automatically if I let the revs stray much beyond 6000. They're as smooth as promised, reinforcing again this sense that the horizon is but a time-warping ankle-flex away. Downshifts, called up by the paddle, are less prompt. It seems that to protect this one-off, the software has been written to prevent downshifts under brakes which might unsettle the back of the car. If I'm not braking, they happen on the button. The transmission uses two clutches, which operate on alternate gear ratios. Thus while you drive in one gear it pre-engages the next, and when you activate the shift one clutch opens on the old gear while the other closes on the new one. So there's absolutely no time wasted in neutral, just seamless urge to the next braking point.
