BASIC INSTINCT

With Can-Am looks, a 460bhp supercharged Honda engine, just 700kg to propel and no driver aids whatsoever, the Spartan is the thrill of driving in its rawest form

- JETHRO BOVINGDON

THESE ARE PRECIOUS MOMENTS AND THEY'RE GROWING rarer by the hour, day, week, month and year. I'm handed a key an actual key that must be inserted and twisted - to a car made by the Spartan Motor Company in Australia and imported, further developed and made road-legal by an outfit named Le Mans Coupes here in the UK. We know these guys well as they're also the people to go to for the fabulous Superformance range of GT40, Shelby Daytona Cobra and Corvette Grand Sport. Wonderful monsters all.

Anyway, the Spartan. That rarest of things. Anew car that's properly light, that takes great pride in its manual gearbox and, refreshingly, doesn't try to be all things to all people. Forget bandwidth. The Spartan weighs 700kg and has 460bhp. It's hair-on-fire lunacy on road or track and all the better for it. The link for Le Mans Coupes, a company built upon selling wonderfully realised recreations of '60s race cars, might not be obvious at first, but the Spartan's Can-Aminspired styling is key, as company founder Oliver Hulme explains: *My father Nigel, he raced a Lola T70 for many years. So we just loved the idea of this, really. It's a fantastic addition to what we do.'

It's a pretty compelling link, isn't it? But you don't need a history of wrestling T70s around Spa-Francorchamps to get the appeal of the Spartan: styling inspired by perhaps the coolest race series ever devised; lightweight tubular steel chassis with carbonfibre bodywork; double wishbones at each corner acting on TracTive semi-active dampers; mid-mounted Honda K24 2.4-litre in-line four with a Rotrex supercharger; six-speed manual 'box; AP Racing brakes; production limited to 300. I'm pretty much sold on this thing even before seeing it in the raw, unpainted carbonfibre.