This, ladies and gentlemen, is the £100,000 elemental RP1. Just put to the back of your
mind for one second what a £100,000 sports car should look like because there's so much
stuff I need to tell you about this car. Elemental sports cars was formed in 2012 by a chap called
John Begley, now John was an ex McLaren employee. He went away, decided he wanted to start his
own sports car company so he handpicked all of the people he knew who had the best skills
to help him create this masterpiece. So let's start with this really clever carbon tub,
everything you see here weighs just 68kg and the good people back at Elemental tell me
that in two hours you can convert this thing from left hand drive back to right hand drive.
So let’s say you’ve just finished a little drive on holiday, you're on the boat, by the
time you get from Calais to Dover you could in theory convert it from left hand drive
back to right hand drive. In a bid to make this thing feel like a real racing car, what
the engineers back at Elemental have done is they’ve angled the seats upwards exactly
the same way they would in an F1 car and in the space where your legs would normally go
which is about here, they’ve put the fuel tanks and that aids towards this car's perfect
50/50 weight distribution. But as we know in any sports car, the really important stuff
is how it goes round bends. So the dampers are mounted on board and they’re Nitron
Shocks with Elemental’s own Eibach-specification springs. Also, really really cleverly on this
car, you can adjust using these two little screws here the stiffness of the car. So you
can slacken it off or you can stiffen it up. It’s really simple, two clicks either way
makes a massive difference. This bonnet lid feels a bit flimsy but this thing only weighs
590kg so I can forgive it of that but this engine, what an engine. 2-litre Ford Ecoboost,
currently producing 320bhp but it is adjustable and I’ll talk to you a bit more about that
when we drive the thing. Right, integrated underfloor aerodynamics, their words, not
mine. This thing helps to produce downforce 400kg at 150 mph and that tells you everything
you need to know about this car and I just want to go and drive it so. Let’s go.
This, believe it or not, is the key. Big orange button. So let’s get to know the car with
240bhp and then we’ll have a play with the settings. Each setting you go up, it slackens
off the ESP as well so let’s get a bit of heat in the tyres to really give it some beans.
You can hear that traction control, here we go right brake, turn, don’t hit the cameraman!
Feel it moving, out, full power, I can feel the traction control just holding me back.
This six-speed sequential gearbox is absolutely fantastic. It’s an electro hydraulic system
and there’s a lovely mechanical feel to it. Over the jump, don’t fly. It feels nothing
like any other 2-litre Ford engine I have ever driven. It’s got the custom maps specified
by the good guys at Elemental, it’s got some internal changes but ultimately it is
still a 2-litre Ford engine and it’s absolutely fantastic and it suits this car perfectly.
It’s quite a nice gritty, rough mood. Although it’s turbocharged, it’s really easy to
manage. It’s quick enough, it’s not lightning fast on this map but that’s what it’s
for. The brakes as well, the brakes feel fantastic, they’re 304mm Alcon brakes, four-pots, on
both ends and they are really, really sharp, they work well. You need to give the pedal
quite a shove and there’s no ABS. Right, I’m going to turn the heat up, here we go we’re
on road map two. So we’ve now got about 280bhp, I say about because this car is still
in development but let’s have a go. Wow, instantly, instantly it’s quicker. The boost
comes in faster, it comes in harder at a lower range and when it’s giving it’s all it
goes hard as well. Through this corner, some cars understeer, this thing doesn’t at all, that
front end just really hangs on. Down a gear. It’s really a physical car to drive. Steps
out a bit there, good, lovely. Really easy to catch as well, really easy to catch.
It's got a reversing camera. Can’t think of another track day special with a reversing camera!
Right, I’m going to put it into race map or track map. So, we’ve now got 320bhp and
the ESP is in, it’s as off-setting as Elemental will allow at the moment. Again, wow, so noticeable.
Sometimes with these settings I think they’re a bit gimmicky, not in this. Every time you
up the ante, you definitely know about it. You can in fact customise your own maps. If
you go in and pay them a visit, they’ll pretty much do whatever you want but this
is their stock setting. Track map, again ESP is on but it’s at its loosest setting and,
my word, is this thing quick! 590kg, it is so, so, so responsive. On the power, tiny
movements is all it needs to correct it. The boost isn’t too spiky even in this track
map. Again that front end just hangs on, so delicate. The weighting is absolutely beautiful.
This car is not in a class of its own. Ariel Atom, fantastic. Bac Mono, fantastic. Caterham
620R, fantastic. Any Radical you choose, fantastic but maybe a little bit less usable than the
others. So where does this thing stand amongst those great cars? Well it feels years ahead
development-wise to the Caterham. It’s got a nicer front end than the Ariel Atom but
it doesn’t feel as savage in terms of performance as the 3.5-litre V8. For that matter, I think
even the Caterham 620R feels a bit more savage in terms of raw performance. But what neither
of those things have are the intimacy and the detail and the real race car feel that
this thing has. It is absolutely pin sharp, you turn an inch, the car moves an inch. This
thing is probably as close to a single-seater race car that you’re going to get with number plates.