This blue Spectre R42 is an ex factory demonstrator and one of just twenty-three R42s ever built. Some say if you validate its 175mph top speed, Monica Bellucci will buy you dinner. In Slough. (That was a Spectre joke.)
A blue 1998 Spectre R42 will go under the hammer at H&H’s auction on December 9, a very nice example with just three previous owners and 22,000 miles on the clock. This rare supercar also comes with a new battery, fresh rear tires, an air-con pump overhaul and a replacement fuel tank.
Cars don’t get much more sorted than that.
If you’re not familiar with the Spectre Supersport company, allow me to fix that! Its story started with GT40 kit cars. Not long after Kenneth Vincent Attwell created the first KVA GT40 replicas, people started jamming Rover V8s into his Ford Cortina-based chassis instead of V6s, which just wasn’t designed to handle that much power.
So then came Roger Attaway with his company GT Developments, offering upgrades fit for a V8. Soon after that, Ray Christopher joined the group, and GT Developments moved forward building very accurate GT40’s using their own chassis and bodies.
Here’s a 1991 GT Development GT40 that sold for $121,132 last year at Bonhams:
In 1994, Anders Hildebrand of the USA company Spectre Motors Inc. set up his British venture Spectre Supersport Ltd, only to take over Ray Christopher’s R42 project from GTD.
The new car was designed to be the GT40 for the modern age, featuring a lightweight honeycomb-reinforced folded aluminum sheet monocoque chassis with a composite body and a 4.6 Ford V8 with 360 horsepower put right where it belongs. The R42 also had a five-speed Getrag transaxle, independent suspension with vented brake discs in all corners and power steering to buyers you some comfort as well.
Unfortunately, development costs escalated quickly and since each R42 took about 2,000 hours to make, the price just wasn’t right for the mid-1990s. Despite Derek Bell getting appointed chairman of the company in 1996, by the time Need for Speed III: Hot Persuit hit the shelfs to convince kids who had no money at all about the R42’s capabilities, Spectre Supersport Ltd went bankrupt.
Then in 1997 came RPM to change movie history:
Straingly enough, Spectre Supersport was reorganized again and after making just 23 R42s, the team started working on a new car called the R45.
Only a single prototype was finished before the chaps finally came to their senses, this yellow guy:
But if your gut tells you that one of GT Development’s GT40 replicas would be a better choice, I can’t blame you.
Photo credit: H&H, Bonhams and Wiki Commons.
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