It’s ludicrous to call a track-dedicated car road legal when you can’t really use it for the road, specially with a clutch takeup as vicious as that of an F1 car’s. But the Caparo T1 is laying claim to the fact that it is the fastest production road-legal car in the world. The Caparo is a UK-built to order car that’s given up all creature comforts to give its driver the ultimate driving experience.
The Caparo T1 is built from composite materials, mostly carbon fiber. It looks like a cross between an F1 car and a prototype racer and can seat a passenger in a staggered configuration. The 350,000 dollar price tag of the Caparo is not the only frightening figure about the car. With its 3.5 liter V8 singing at 10,500 rpm to produce 575 horsepower, the 550 kilogram Caparo T1 boasts of an astronomical 1,045 horsepower per ton power-to-weight ratio. This makes it the first series production car calculated to surpass the 1,000 bhp-per-ton barrier. Instantaneous shifts are produced by the pneumatic gearbox actuator in conjunction with the drive-by-wire throttle.
Other frightening figures are 0-60 mph in 2.5 seconds, on to hitting 100 miles per hour in under 5 seconds. 100 mph to 0 is achieved in 3.5 seconds. No sense in taking it out on a busy road then, because you’re sure to be rearended with that kind of braking performance. But the frightening figures don’t stop with acceleration and decceleration, because the Caparo T1 can pull 2.5g in high speed corners, thanks to its highly developed aerodynamics. This phenomenal performance envelope was achieved because the designers of the Caparo T1 were part of the original design team for the McLaren F1, which is today considered one of the greatest supercars of all time.
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