I’d probably need to lose 150 pounds and half my size-thirteen foot to drive this car, but it damn well might be worth it to try. I got the great pleasure of watching this 13,000 RPM ripper of a Lotus Seven clone compete in the 2023 autocross season, and I’ve dreamt about it nearly every night this winter. There is something so intoxicating about a Yamaha R1 engine in a lightweight 1200-pound package. It was nice to be able to dream about it from afar, but now that it’s available for sale for the reasonable sum of $15,000, it’s a little too real and I’m considering what sacrifices I might have to make in order to buy it.
The Akron Sports Car Club runs an extremely sketchy road-course-style autocross season on the staging lanes of the local quarter mile drag racing track. It tends to be a very fast course with sharp 90 degree corners mixed with long third-or-fourth-gear straights. Even in my little Dodge Neon ACR, I was seeing speeds in excess of 80 miles per hour with little to no runoff and lots of places for mistakes to become exponentially worse. This little orange tube was screaming away for all it was worth, sliding all four tires through the tight corners, and the driver skill needed to keep it pointed the right way was probably beyond my ability. The whole thing was intense to witness.
The car is claimed to make 170 horsepower from a 2004 Yamaha R1 superbike engine. The seller says it weighs just 1350 pounds with him in it. The car uses the motorcycle transmission, and shifting is done with paddles behind the steering wheel. The car doesn’t have reverse, naturally, so you’ll have to avoid nose-in parking, but it’s a small price to pay for this much fun. The rear axle is from a Mazda RX-7 with a Miata Torsen-style limited slip differential fitted. The car even comes with a little trailer to haul race tires, a jug of fuel, and some tools.
The chassis has been stretched to fit a driver over 6 feet tall, but the thing isn’t very wide, so if you’re a husky American-sized fella like myself, you might have to slim down a bit to drive it. An acquaintance who has driven it said that his size-nine shoes had a hard time not hitting the throttle while hard on the brakes, so my big clodhoppers would certainly have to go al fresco to even make an attempt.
So if you’re a jockey-sized human with a need for high-rev speed, maybe this is the car for you. Please buy it so I don’t do anything too stupid in the next month. I don’t know the seller, but he’s a friend of a friend, and they say he needs to move out of state in the next month, so he might be willing to wheel and deal. Go ahead and live my dream, I won’t be jealous at all.
