The claims are bold. Really bold. Top speed of 200mph, 0-60mph in 4.1sec, drag factor of 0.31, 400bhp, 1250kg: even by today's standards, that's fast, sleek, powerful and extremely light. The Ascari Ecosse is quite the supercar.
The what, I hear you ask? Exactly. So here's a very small number: 16. Only that many built, in the late 1990s, yet this car has quite a heritage, and dates from an era when it seemed that - suddenly - supercars were coming from every angle. Possibly the greatest supercar of all time was a product of that decade - the McLaren F1 - as were such greats as the Bugatti EB110 and Ferrari's F50, while the 550 Maranello revived the spirit of the Daytona.
But what about those we remember a little less well? The likes of those include the Yamaha OX99-11, only three prototypes built, all around Yamaha's Formula 1 V12 engine, which otherwise powered Brabhams on track. Or how about the two-off Nissan R390, a V8-powered homologation job? The wonderful Cizeta-Moroder V16T, the weird Panoz Esperante, Italy's De Tomaso Guarà, France's Venturi 400GT, maybe the Spectre R42 (basically a GT40 come back to haunt us)... I could go on.
Into that world arrived the Ascari Ecosse, another race-inspired road car with oodles of power from a well-bred V8, in this case a mid-mounted Hartge-tuned BMW engine. And it grew from a proposal made by one Lee Noble.
This story is from the February 2023 edition of Octane.
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This story is from the February 2023 edition of Octane.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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Will China Change Everything? - China is tearing up modern motor manufacture but is yet to make more than a ripple in the classic car world. That could be about to change dramatically
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