The Hooniverse Dream Car Build Garage: Project Monster Miura SV-R Time Attack

tumblr_mp23vj3hGj1qbb5xmo1_1280 Welcome to the Dream Car Build Garage. Every so often, inspiration hits in a big way. I don’t know about you, but when I get inspiration for a car build, it’s all I can think about for weeks. I literally dream about driving my crazy mental build, and make up entire forum ‘build threads’ for how the project would play out in my head. This happens probably at least once every other month, so I’ve got dozens of these crazy projects floating around in my head, plaguing my every waking moment. Many of them would require far more funds than I have access to, but it doesn’t hurt to dream, right? Actually, it hurts a lot, because I’ll never see these come to fruition. Click through the jump to be tormented by my ideas with me. Misery loves company, right? Remember back a few years ago when Chris Rado’s Scion TC time attack car was in all of the big car magazines? That car was considered ‘radical’ and ‘outside the box’ in its development, and stood out mostly because of its front mounted wing. Since then, time attack racing has stuck in my head as something that is all about innovation, and balls-to-the-wall no-holds-barred engineering to eke out that last tenth of a second. The major problem I see here, however, is that Rado’s Scion was shaped like a brick, and it had so much downforce that it was necessary to outfit the car with an 1,100 horsepower engine with a massive turbocharger. With some work, and a little ingenuity, it would be possible to build a comparatively slippery car design to have just as much downforce in the corners, while making use of active aero to both decrease drag on the straights, and to dramatically increase drag under braking to help slow the car. Time Attack is like Autocross for big kids, so we’re going to need a big kid car. nfsscionrado While most Time Attacks are populated by Civics and Evos, they occasionally attract something as exotic as the odd NSX or GT-R. My aim is to up the ante a little bit, and it serves no purpose other than to claim track records and maybe a case full of trophies. This car would stomp on every track record for a closed-wheel car ever. The way I see this playing car playing out, it would probably be faster around most tracks than even the fastest LMP cars, because it doesn’t have to follow any particular regulations, allowing it more power, more downforce, active aero, and wider, stickier tires. Besides all that, it would look infinitely more beautiful, natch. Don’t get me wrong, I like the looks of LMP cars, but there is just something up my sleeve that challenges all notion of beauty. You know that part of ‘Inception’ where Eames says “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.”? Apparently I took that to heart, because my theoretical time attack dream build is Lamborghini based, touts full carbon-fiber Miura bodywork, sports about 1500 all-wheel driven horsepower, active aero, and a good bit of GT3 racecar engineering. When up against those GT-R and NSX competitors, it would be like bringing a gun that shoots chainsaws to a spork fight. What’s the bill come to? Who cares, this is a dream, and I’m going racing in it. Atlanta Region SCCA Solo event #4 at AMS There were two sources for the inspiration of a build like this. The first is this Honda Z600. It’s a tube frame chassis using a passenger-seat-mounted motorcycle engine with a 100% carbon fiber lift-off body. This car was built for autocross, so his carbon fiber sheets could be a bit thinner than mine, as his only have to stand up to about 70 mph winds, while the Monster Miura would need to stay intact at around 190, right? Anyhow, I saw this car years ago running in Atlanta, GA, and it’s stuck with me for a long time. I didn’t know what kind of body I wanted, but I knew that I wanted a carbon bodied tube frame racer for something. Who doesn’t? With a carbon body and (screw it, why not?) titanium tube-frame would give the car a superleggera-embarrassingly low weight. 10552532_10100117868210069_2212380089349458193_n The second source of inspiration came last weekend when I visited the RM car auctions in Monterey, CA. They had not one but two Lamborghini Miuras for sale, and that has always been in my top three car designs (coincidentally my other two favorites were also selling that weekend; Ferrari’s 250 GTO and Toyota’s 2000GT). It’s a gorgeous car, and it is an outright shame that this beast never really turned any wheels in competition. As involved as Ferrari is in motorsport, it is somewhat surprising that Sant’Agata has never really done much with motorsport. Their engines are powerful, their designs (especially the early ones) were sleek and slippery, and being one of the first to innovate the mid-engine supercar design, certainly had a handling advantage over other racers of the time. 10600521_10100117868070349_5124577433709897052_n While I would never consider hacking apart a gorgeous Miura for this hair-brained scheme, the body does lend itself well to replication, and creating a buck and molding the carbon would not be impossible. For the purposes of this exercise, however, some modifications would need to be made. First, I would probably only mold the top 3/4s, as I would like the body to sit lower on the chassis, and the front fenders would probably need to be exaggerated slightly to fit a taller wheel and tire combination. The side intakes would be retained, but the headlamp buckets would be molded over (Miura Jota style). Obviously to get the downforce we would need, a bunch of little wing flaps and cannards would be grafted onto the front. It would be easy enough to use the front hood’s heat extraction vents to direct airflow over an underbody mounted front wing to create some front downforce. A wide and low splitter would be grafted to the front as well. The fender mounted mirrors could be gotten rid of completely, and if necessary, a small rear-view camera could be added and show the results on a center stack mounted screen. When I dream up my wicked project cars, I usually like to keep the engine at least in the same family of cars. As such, the drivetrain for this track monster would be sourced entirely from the relatively new Aventador LP700-4. While this is a compromise in terms of weight, it would certainly be nice to have all-wheel drive in order to put all that power down in such a lightweight car. The engine itself sounds absolutely wicked. 690 horsepower, however, is nowhere near enough needed to break records and run down open-wheel cars. We’re going to need significantly more than that. When you need a bunch of power out of your Lamborghini, you usually go to Underground Racing. They offer a twin-turbo kit for the Aventador that apparently cranks out a tire shredding 1500 horses. Lamborghini’s E-gear isn’t exactly my favorite transmission ever, but it’ll do the job, and helps keep the entire driveline working in unison. Possibly using a sequential gearbox from X-trac or Hewland or something would work, but would definitely increase development costs. Interestingly, there are a handful of LP640 engines from earlier Murcielagos on ebay right now, and that seems like a decent amount of engine for the requested $20-35,000. I would have thought one of those engines would be a lot more than that. 2012-Lamborghini-Aventador-LP700-4-engine So we’ve got the body handled, and we have the high-power drivetrain under control. What about wheels? Well, for this light of a car, certainly the lightest wheel possible would be ideal. We’d probably be aiming for a 12-inch wide wheel at all four corners, and an 18″ diameter would probably be ideal for tire availability. I would guess that for enough dollar signs, Carbon Revolution would be more than happy to build a set of carbon wheels for this project. Deciding which tire to work with would be critical for absolute lap times, so it’s hard to say which would work best. Options from Michelin would probably be ideal, but then again, it would require a tire test to determine which brand would win out overall. Oh, and Lamborghini, if you’re listening, I’d be happy to build this beast if you loan me an engineer, a welder, an autoclave, and a full LP700-4 drivetrain for a year or so. Think of all the track records lists that could soon say “Lamborghini” at the top of them, I’d even ship it over to Germany and grab you a Nurburgring record. Want to go Pikes Peak racing? I’m your guy, and this is your car! reiter-lamborghini-gallardo-lp560-gt3-detailed_4 How about you, what are your ideas? What have you been dreaming about for years and would like to see brought to life? There are unlimited spaces in our Dream Car Build Garage, so be sure to catch future installations of this series. Dreamers, come out of the woodwork, and let us know what you’ve been imaginarily plotting in the comments below. Photos: Lamborghini, Reiter Engineering, Car and Driver, and Flickr user Solo Atlanta. RM Auction Miura photos ©2014 Hooniverse/Bradley C. Brownell, All Rights Reserved.

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