There’s a new track-only special on the horizon and, surprisingly, it’s one of the very few you’ll find from a manufacturer here in the Southern Hemisphere thanks to Rodin Cars in New Zealand releasing stats on its all-new FZERO.
To make things even more exciting, the headline stats are simply jaw-dropping. We’re talking 865kW of power and 1026Nm of torque courtesy of a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V10 hybrid powertrain, designed and manufactured from the ground-up by the team at Rodin Cars and Neil Brown Engineering. It can rev all the way to 10,000rpm.
Couple that with a claimed weight figure of just 698kg with all the fluids onboard, and you’ve got a power-to-weight ratio of 1.2kW per kilogram, and a claimed top speed exceeding 360km/h. The twin-turbo V10 hybrid powertrain is said to weigh just 132kg, and has been nicknamed the RCTEN.
Power is thrown to the wheels via an eight-speed gearbox housed in a titanium casing that weighs 66kg in total, which is paired with a hydraulic differential.
The FZERO measures in at 5500mm long, 2200mm wide, 1130mm tall with a wheelbase spanning 3000mm, and has a front and rear track measuring 1852mm and 1790mm respectively.
Braking power comes courtesy of front and rear 380mm PFC carbon discs clamped by titanium six-piston front and four-piston rear calipers, with regenerative braking also on offer for the hybrid system.
Additional stopping power and high-speed handling prowess is enabled by a massive rear wing and floor design that offers up to 4000kg of downforce for the sub-700kg track monster.
It comes riding on 18-inch forged magnesium rims from OZ Racing that are built to F1 specs, with slick rubber provided by Avon.
The entirety of the chassis is made from carbon fibre composites on-site at Rodin Cars’s facility on the South Island of New Zealand, which is said to house a world-class 3D printing department and no less than three test tracks.
Rodin Cars, free of those pesky regulations for both street and race cars, says that it has been free to go wild, saying that the FZERO “takes a leap further” than even a Formula 1 car, while joking that the only regulations it needed to adhere to are nature’s laws of physics.
The company says that production of the FZERO will be limited to just 27 units in total, the first of which are set to roll off the factory floor, ready for customer deliveries in early 2023. David Dicker, founder of Rodin Cars, said:
“The Rodin ZFERO is a physical representation of the ultimate heights in vehicle performance. Without the restrictions of building to a set of rules, we are able to make the car lighter, more powerful, and produce significantly more downforce. The only real restrictions we face are the laws of physics, and we have even pushed those to the absolute limit.”
We’ll be keeping a close eye on our Kiwi neighbours to see how the FZERO’s production journey pans out, and hopefully witness some track videos soon.
