There are cars which go beyond the conventional boundaries and exist to pursue the relentless quest for speed. However, a new genre of hypercars is going to the next level in employing extreme race car technology to create monsters that take no prisoners.
The McLaren Solus GT and the Aston Martin Valkyrie for example are thinly disguised track monsters with little regard for comfort. These are brutal weapons for speed and exist to devour track times.
McLaren looks like a video game
Nothing else is important and everything is sacrificed but they also look unreal when juxtaposed against ‘normal’ hypercars.
The McLaren for example looks like it belongs to a video game and it does since it was conjured up with the folks at Gran Turismo but here, the car has been brought to life. The Solus GT has a single seat and a canopy to enter while the design looks like it was plucked from Mars.
McLaren Solus
Raucous V10
The lines are crazy and looks unlike anything else with huge fenders mixed with functional aspects related to downforce. Everything is here for a reason including that gigantic front splitter and the diffuser. You sit Formula 1 style but the powertrain here is a raucous V10.
Yes, it revs to a stratospheric 10,000 rpm and it pushes out more than 800 horses with a higher power to eight ratios since it weighs practically nothing. Everything is like a race car while the numbers are insane with a 0-60mph time of 2.5-seconds and a top speed of over 200mph.
Aston Martin
Aston Martin: Drives like an F1 car
Weighing under a tonne, the Solus GT is a billionaires track day tool but requires committed driving talent fully uncork its madness. The Aston Martin Valkyrie is very much in the same vein but a bit more luxurious than the Solus while you can wander to the shops in one.
It is basically an F1 car which you can register on-road while being sprinkled with some magic from F1 Guru Adrian Newey. Like the McLaren, it is raw and fast with more attention towards giving a pure race car like feel.
McLaren Solus
Uncompromising racecars
However, the cockpit is still a bit more conventional while the lovely V12 engine is completely left on its own. With an electric motor, the Valkyrie makes 1,139 bhp and that means it is fast but on the edges of insanity. There are lots of curves and cuts while the design has been tasked with the idea of race car like aero along with generating more downforce than ever.
There is no refinement and it is an uncompromising racer but you can drive it on the road which means the millions will let dazed onlookers appreciate it more. One can argue that these two cars are too extreme, too expensive, and pointless but they take automotive engineer to new levels while basically making you enjoy race car tech-if you have the money that is.
Top image: McLaren Solus
Somnath Chatterjee grew up around cars and most of his childhood was spent obsessing over supercars. Years later he decided to start writing about them and hasn’t looked back since. While he has had his fair share of cars, the world of automobiles never ceases to amaze him. Travelling all over the world to drive them along with sharing that experience is what ultimately keeps him going. He hopes to drive a Ferrari 288 GTO someday because, well, do you really need a reason?
