James Glickenhaus is nuts, but in all the right ways. In the case of the forthcoming SCG 003 LeMans car-for-the-road, he'll be offering a version that can be converted from road car to race car and back again. And that's exactly what he plans to do at the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Back in the early days of endurance racing, it was a run what you brung affair. Drive to the track, swap out some components, and then race. Glickenhaus wants to do exactly that.
Speaking with Road & Track, Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus will offer a road/race version of the SCG 003 that can be transformed for the track duty with a conversion kit that replaces the road engine and gearbox for another race-ready unit.
We are offering pure road and pure race versions, as well as separate road-to-race and race-to-road conversion kits. The car is strong enough and modular so that the race roll cage can be unbolted and the race wing, race seats, race splitter, and race diffuser can easily be swapped back and forth as desired with road seats, a road wing, and road diffuser. The road version still has front and rear roll hoops.
Glickenhaus expanded on this over at FerrariChat. When a forum member asked about the specific plans, Glickenhaus responded:
That's exactly what we hope to do in 2016. We'll set off from our factory in Turin with SCG 003 in road-legal configuration and drive her to Le Mans. Hopefully along the way, car clubs will escort us. In the pits, we will convert her to the race version and compete in the 24 Hours. At the race's conclusion, we'll reconvert her to road-legal condition and drive to Paris for dinner.
We hope to do this at several other major endurance races as well, like NY to Daytona. For that, we may need to fit snow tires.
Both Le Mans and Daytona have let the DeltaWing race. Why not us?
Like we said: Nuts. But the car world needs more people like Jim.