We last heard of the DeltaWing Technologies' consortium of mad scientists in their plans to build a road car for car sharing. Not only is the arrowhead-shaped road car moving right along, but they plan to make a GT race car based on that shared pointy chassis.
The DeltaWing concept was all about unparalleled efficiency. With about half the horsepower, half the fuel on board and far less weight of most of the other prototypes, they've been able to make the Ace and Gary Special unbelievably quick, as long as the transmission holds up. (They're hoping that transmission has been fixed since Daytona, though.)
The company's new goal, however, is to create road cars, saying that they'd like to take the tech from "raceway to driveway." As such, they're starting off with this race car to finalize all the road car bits.
DeltaWing wants to build two cars: a two-seater GT and a four-passenger family car. The cars will all share this same basic architecture, but be reconfigurable for different layouts and drivetrains. According to Don Panoz, the DeltaWing's design lends itself to better fuel economy regardless of what drivetrain it uses.
The two-seater race car will be developed first to move the road car project along. DeltaWing hopes the first prototype for the GT racer will be complete by either late summer or early fall so that it can make it to the races at the end of the 2015 United SportsCar season. From there, the chassis will go on to various federal and international road car tests to get the road car legal and ready for sale.
The race car will be powered by some form of four-cylinder internal combustion petrol engine, expected to make about 340 hp. DeltaWing Director of Communications Gary Fong could not confirm if they were going to build the engines in-house or use a customer engine for the project yet.
Brian Willis recently came over from Canadian race car firm Multimatic to head up the new GT race car program at DeltaWing Technologies and also serve as the the vice president of the company. Willis has worked in racing for years, including a stint with the Williams Formula One team, but his most recent project he worked on with Multimatic was the ultra-secret Ford GT.
So, what will the road car (which already gets my vote for "Car That Most Needs A Hayabusa Swap" before it even exists) cost, once all is said and done? They're looking at selling the four-passenger road car for between $27,000-$30,000. Want to take the GT racing? Those will likely be $60,000-$70,000.
Some of the road cars will be powered by an electric motor, as Damon reported several months ago. DeltaWing Technologies also announced that they signed an exclusive distribution agreement with DHX Motors for most of the world, including North America. DHX makes the first internally-cooled electric motor, which makes it weigh far less than many existing electric motors on the market now. Cooling is what takes up a lot of weight in electric motors, and by using capillaries inside the electric motor to cool it, DHX makes their systems weigh far less.
Of course, Panoz is still selling the Esperante Spyder, if you'd like something a little more old school. Sure enough, the 25th Anniversary edition of the Esperante is still alive and kickin'.
The GT race car has an extremely optimistic sounding timeline, but given all the build-up they've had about their road car plans, hopefully this race car moves both projects along quickly.
Photo credits: DeltaWing Technologies
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