As a Road & Track Contributing Editor, Murray presents here his technical and styling analyses. We are delighted to share his views with our readers, with full disclosure that Murray is a part of Caparo. We know you will find these behind-the-scenes glimpses as fascinating as we do. — Ed.
Caparo T1 Technical Analysis
Every so often in our world of sports cars one comes along that genuinely pushes the boundaries of design and performance just a little more. These are the cars that help inspire our industry and encourage further lateral thinking. Milestone vehicles are more often than not from the mind of a single designer or from a small team of very focused engineers — the Caparo T1 is no exception.
Ben Scott-Geddes and Graham Halstead are the T1 designers — both of them ex McLaren Cars. Ben and Graham were the two senior composite designers on the McLaren F1 road and racing programs and also on the Mercedes SLR McLaren design and production program. They also worked as the senior engineers in my advanced concepts team during my last two years at McLaren. This experience exposed them to my very disciplined (if not fanatical) approach to lightweight by design.
Like most exotic super cars, the T1 began as part idea, part dream — to produce a road legal/track supercar using Formula 1 materials and technology that would produce racing levels of lateral and longitudinal g-forces and be the first road car to produce 1000 bhp per ton — approximately twice the power-to-weight ratio of the Bugatti Veyron
Unlike most new supercar programs that seem to fail at the first fence, the Caparo T1 exists and is currently going through its development program prior to production. This is largely down to 18 months of very hard work by Ben and Graham’s small, dedicated team and also thanks to the support from Caparo Group and its CEO Angad Paul.
Caparo is a $1.5 billion privately owned engineering group with a diverse range of skills in steel pressings, forgings, aluminum castings, through to braking systems, suspension and chassis components and tubular systems. Their latest investment is in two companies that will research innovative production systems and lightweight composite materials solutions for OEMs. So they have scale and know a thing or two about the automotive industry
The T1 is fundamentally a 2-seater F1 car with a carbon-fiber monocoque and body, wild ground-effect venturis, combined with conventional wings and a 3.5-liter V-8 engine. The shape of the Caparo is straight out of the “form follows function” book dictated mainly by packaging requirements and wind-tunnel results, while material selection is definitely “fit for purpose.
Check out www.driveyourdream.com to see if they have one you can test drive.