Caparo T1 anyone?

Function over form usually does look good, Ferrari 333SP, Audi R8, plenty of F1 cars, plenty of race cars at every level look amazing and they have only one purpose. The Caparo is a visual nightmare and there is no reason for it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but bad design is bad design.

 

Who wouldn't want this car. Its the closest thing you can get to an F1 car on the road. Blazing fast, amazing stopping ability, corning, and blinding speed. Only concern is speed bumps/humps. You would never be able to drive this is a major city or in any normal town because you're so low to the ground that a person in their 35 story Hummer H1 decapitates you. Still if I had 500k to spend on a car and I couldn't buy a Ferrari, this would be at the top of my list. Thus it is going onto my already extremely long list of wanted cars.

 

This problem is very hard to avoid on high-downforce cars. As speed increases, the vertical load on each tire changes. This usually doesn't happen in the same way for both ends of the car. It effectively makes the front-to-rear weight distribution change with speed. Traditional suspensions can't cope with this. A setup that works great at high speed will be useless in other situations.

Add to all of this that a high-downforce setup requires an extremely stiff suspension with very low ride height. Low speed grip will be poor just because the tires are basically skipping off every little bump in the road (even if it's very smooth).

 

I think this begs the question...why make a ROAD car capable of 3g cornering, at the expense of almost no control at lower speeds? It just seems like such a stupid oversight.

 

That's why nobody else has done it. It's a silly exercise. I guess it did work from a marketing standpoint, though. Adding a few lights to a race car has generated a huge amount of publicity for them.

 

Pfff.. just turn around!

 

That might be dangerous too, I hear it's pretty unstable in low speed turns.

 

Hmm...Not sure but i believe 3g cornering can be obtained solely through mechanical grip. However i have no proof of any kind to back this up, yet......

Just take a look at F1 now, we are seeing rule changes to reduce aero, as well, i think we may begin to see advancements in the mechanical side coming around again.

 

Check. Check. Not so much. You said that one already.

 

I don't get the b!tchfest concerning this car.
Does the world need an Enzo, Mclaren F1, or Veyron ?
Wheres the negative vibes on these cars ?
The Caparo is a no holds barred light weight street car designed for the few that can appreciate it.
There are going to be gremlins initially as with any car.
The claimed 3 Gs comes from a no rules limited ground effects/wing package.
Mechanical grip is a function of TIRES and caster/camber/toe in or out. That's it.
I feel this car is the ultimate street legal performance weapon. If you want practicality get a Chevy.
As far as Ugly this is far from it. That prize goes to the F-50.

 

You're right, but nobody ever claimed that it was solely through mechanical grip. The 3 g cornering claim must (if true) be possible only at very high speed in a maximum-downforce configuration. That's not otherwise possible with current tire technology. No amount of suspension tuning can allow that without a lot of aero help. It's pretty clear from looking at the car that they put a lot of effort into the body shape. Too bad that it's not practical on a street car (at least not without active suspension and aero).

 

The point is that this isn't a street car in any sense except the legal one (at least in some countries). I'm not sure how much the suspension can be raised, but at the settings I've seen pictures of, bumps in the road would probably rip off the floor panel. Even the smooth Top Gear test track seems to have been able to do this (I'm not sure it was from a collision, but it seems reasonable). In any case, the car could not go over a speed bump or up any driveway.

Even ignoring all of that, let's say you were driving along at high speed with a high-downforce configuration. If you hit a bump in the road that doesn't bottom out the car, the body could pitch and immediately cause a large aero change. Downforce could turn into lift, and you'd lose control. In severe cases, this could even flip the car. The Caparo is beyond impractical. It's simply stupid to try driving anything like that on a public road. A modern road racing car is optimized for an environment very different from a public road, and can't be idly used to drive around in. Claiming to want a "race car for the street" this extreme is just ignorant machismo. The Enzos or Veyrons of the world seem completely safe to drive on a regular roads, so there is no comparison.

Also, the gremlins this car has been experiencing are hardly normal. Almost every test had something serious go wrong. Regular cars (even supercars) do not go up in flames or have wheels fall off with any regularity. This car sounds like a deathtrap.

 

+1 except the f50 comment. This car is the ultimate street legal race car.. as impractical as it is. It would be a blast to own! Beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder, as i happen to love the looks!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3k_l9eG_H4

still can't get over a speedbump so maybe not as great as they say...

 

Seven seconds quicker on their 1 minute track than a special Koenigseg / Enzo Etc ?
SEVEN SECONDS !
But wait.
How about room for the groceries ?
No doubt this car is a turd.

 

If I remember correctly, Ayrton Senna's fatal accident was caused by the car bottoming out, and without that vacuum under the car, it had next to no aero grip, and with the bottom of the car touching the ground and not the tires, no mechanical grip either. This was on a prepared and maintained racing circuit. Trying to drive this Caparo, which I assume has vast underbody aero packages, anywhere close to the limit on the street (bumps, expansion joints, potholes, imperfections) is going to hurt alot of people, especially when you consider the enormous speed of the thing. As Ralph Nader said about the Chevy Corvair: Unsafe at any speed.

 

You have no idea how many dips and speedbumps there are even in your own neighborhood, that is until suddenly, you can't get over them... I would only imagine how bad it scrapes getting in to your average driveway. If the world were perfectly paved with not one rut or deviation in its height or quality, then the Radical is probably a better choice still.

 

I was totally enamored with the car after reading two articles about it claiming it would outperform a F1. Well the Topgear test showed it has no mechanical grip around slow corners and the Topgear Stig test around their track showed that a Renault F1 is still faster. By a mile.

So yes, it is a supercar, but a distant cry from what Gordon Murray proclaimed it is capable of.

 

But 10 sec faster than a Enzo, the same way a F1 car is 10 sec faster than a Caparo


As I said I would get a supercharged Ariel Atom...