- 1,115
- Rivera
- Tsukishima-TDUDT
There are sometimes cars that are the dream of kids, teenagers or young adults while having never been produced, at least in road-going version. This is the case of the Helem V6, which underwent several lives, many prototypes and several names, raising hope among amateur chauvinists, without ever really succeeding.
It all starts with the famous Spider Renault Sport in 1996. Deciding building his own racing car for the GT2 class at Le Mans, Jean-Michel Roy, associated with the engineer Brian Johnson creates "RJ Racing"
and gets Renault authorization to design a race car based on the Spider, the "Helem" (acronym for "LM" for "Le Mans") has a twin-turbo V6. Two copies of this racing machine developing 550 hp on the basis of the Alpine A610 V6 were manufactured and engaged in competition.
Due to homologation purposes, RJ Racing should have started production by at least 50 copies in order to compete in GT2. A road-going prototype with a V6 monoturbo identical to that of the Venturi 300 Atlantic (3 liters, 281 horsepower) was supposed to be introduced, however, RJ Racing went bankrupt in 1999.
Nogaro Technologies would then buy the project. Nogaro planned on building a new road-going prototype on the basis of Helem, which features the V6 SS9 of the Peugeot 406. But the death of Claude Fior, and lack of means, without doubt, will scupper the deal... Until the company Technical Studio, based in Boismorand, Loiret, presented in 2006 the TS-07 on the basis of Helem. It could claim several engines with power ranging from 180 to 400 horses.
Technical Studios executives were fixed a target of 12 copies but were limited to a single prototype due to the lack of resources and customers.
