2010
AC Roadster Iconic
This
story is familiar in so many ways but unique in one: Claudio Ballard, founder
of Iconic Motors, has actually built a car. He let us drive it, and not only
did it not catch fire, lose a wheel, or otherwise attempt to self-destruct, it
also drove pretty well.
Ballard’s
ambitions are big. He says he wants to build “the world’s most refined sports
car.” His first entry into the fierce arena of megabuck sports cars is the
$ 425,000 Iconic AC Roadster, and he hopes to build 100 copies. Riding the
coattails of the venerated AC name and Shelby Cobra styling, the roadster’s
co-opted heritage and specifications 825 hp pushing around only 2400
pounds suggest something other than refinement.
The
roadster came about with help from some prestigious partners, namely,
concept-vehicle development maven Bob Nowakowski of Technosports in Livonia,
Michigan, a company whose portfolio includes work on such projects as the Shelby
GR1 concept and the Ford GT and Ernie Elliott, NASCAR engine builder
extraordinaire. The car itself is more upper-crust hot rod than production car.
Much of the roadster has been CNC milled from blocks of billet aluminum,
ranging from chassis bits down to the monogrammed grillwork in the intake
ducts. There are cool engineering tricks, too, like passages drilled in the
upper control arms for brake fluid so no brake lines clutter the view of the
suspension.
Key
the NASCAR-inspired Ford V-8, and it snarls to life, a lumpy cam ensuring the
fuel-injected mill sounds appropriately menacing. With a super-heavy clutch and
4000 rpm required to take off from a standstill, it’s easy to forget you’re in
a “refined sports car,” and it’s even easier to believe you’re in a ride on the
grid ready to fight for the checker at the 24 Hours of Daytona. The performance
claims would be competitive on a racetrack, Iconic claims the car will reach 60
mph in three seconds and top out over 200.
With
carbon-ceramic brakes, no ABS, and contact patches wide enough to make a Viper
jealous, it’s all g-force and anxiety behind the wheel thrilling, but thank
goodness our drive was extremely brief. There’s no pretense of civility:
Madness is what the Iconic AC Roadster is all about. In an age of
ultra-high-performance but zero-work sports cars aided entirely by computers,
it’s refreshing to have a car try to kill you every now and again. The brake
pedal, although incredibly stiff, offers gobs of feedback. The manual steering
rack is laser-precise, as is the six-speed Tremec gearbox.
The
AC Roadster isn’t all caveman grunts and wooden clubs, though. This car also
serves as the demonstration piece for Iconic’s sister company, VEEDIMS
Corporation, which takes its name from its Virtual Electrical Electronic Device
Interface Management System. In an easier-to-digest nugget, VEEDIMS basically
replaces the traditional CAN-bus system that various in-vehicle modules use to
communicate, instead utilizing good new-fashioned ethernet. It is supposed to
make maintenance and monitoring of the vehicle’s vital signs much easier,
although we haven’t heard much complaining about the current onboard diagnostic
system.
This
is where the story turns familiar again. Although the car we drove didn’t break
and didn’t try to kill us in any way that suggested it wasn’t well engineered,
it was not without its glaring faults. This is a prototype, but some parts that
were claimed to be production spec, such as some interior switchgear, were
obviously cobbled together. Then, of course, there’s the issue of the styling. To us, Iconic’s AC Roadster
looks like a Chinese knockoff of the Cobra it emulates.
Although
the car is competent, at its price, our attitude toward the Iconic AC Roadster
changes completely. We’d take a couple of the world’s most refined sports cars
from one of the world’s established sports-car builders or, heck, an original
Cobra rather than some upstart’s science-fair copy of one of the most
celebrated, brutal, and rewarding cars in history.
Source
: caranddriver
