All Sections

Radical RXC Turbo 500 wants to be king of the Nürburgring

The Nürburgring production car crown is likely to remain on Radical’s head. The British maker of four-wheeled idiocy has just announced the insanely powerful RXC Turbo 500, a scarier version of the RXC Turbo.

The RXC range of Radicals are completely road legal and have an actual roof (a first for Radical), making them a tad more practical than the roof-less SR8. But still as mad as a bag of spiders.

Radical will be taking the RXC Turbo 500 to the legendary Nordschleife circuit to prove its ‘speed, grip, balance and exploitability’ in August 2015. That means the 6:48 record set by the Radical SR8 LM is going to get smashed.

Why so sure? Well for one thing the 3.5-litre twin-turbo Ford EcoBoost V6 in the RXC has been tuned to develop a terrifying 530bhp, nearly 100bhp more than the RXC Turbo. That means 462bhp per tonne, beating the McLaren P1‘s measly 623bhp per tonne.

0 to 62mph takes less than 2.6 seconds in the RXC Turbo 500, while 0 to 100mph takes 6.8 seconds – about as long as it takes for most cars to reach 62mph. 40 to 80mph is dispatched in just 3 seconds.

Radical will have three cracks at the record. The first will be done with the Dunlop SportMaxx road tyres used to get the car from its Peterborough headquarters to Germany. Attempt two will use Dunlop Direzza D03G, as used in the record-breaking SR8 LM run, and then finally on Dunlop SP sport slicks.

To give you an idea of how fast Radical cars are, Porsche’s 875bhp 918 Spyder could only manage a time of 6:57. Nissan GT-R Nismo? A positively glacial 7:08. Only Stefan Bellof (rest in peace) puts the Radical to shame with his time of 6:11, but for that he used a Porsche 956 Group C beast so that’s cheating.

Radical founder and managing director Phil Abbott said: “Our outstanding technical team wanted to deliver something really special in the RXC Turbo 500, and I think they’ve definitely moved the game on.
 
“The partnership between the RXC’s accessible aerodynamics and grip, and the ballistic performance of the Turbo 500’s high-performance Ford EcoBoost powerplant delivers an intoxicating, spectacular driving experience like no other road car.”

Nürburgring fans were pleased to learn the track had found a new owner amid fears it could close forever.

The Radical RXC Turbo 500 will be unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show in early March 2015. Existing owners of the RXC Turbo can order the upgrade kit right now. Expect to pay a premium on the RXC Turbo’s £129,000 asking price for the complete car.

Check out our list of the ten most memorable Nürbiurgring moments ever.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *