Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but there’s a new, expensive, exclusive supercar in town. It comes from a manufacturer you’ve never heard of, and has otherworldly performance figures. Oh, and it’s electric.
It all sounds rather familiar, but this time it looks like it might be the real deal.
Osaka-based Aspark — which describes itself as “the world’s most interesting company” — has created the high-performance vehicle it calls the “Owl”. It looks fairly stunning, like an old-school GT1 racer.
But on paper, the figures don’t appear that stunning. It has a couple of electric motors, good for 430hp or so. The battery pack — which Aspark hasn’t detailed yet — gives about a 93-mile range. So far, so average.
The Owl has something of a party piece though. It can hit 60mph in 1.9 seconds. That’s not a claim either; Aspark has actually done it, and released the video below:
How? Well, there’s a few things of note here. Firstly, the car isn’t in road legal trim here. It’s wearing some pretty sticky Hoosier race slicks, which the driver warms up with a static burnout beforehand. They certainly help, but given the exceptionally short testing area in the video it’s clear that the test driver wanted the best chance to complete the run before he drove into some geography.
The real secret though is the weight. You can clearly see the naked carbon fiber weave of the Owl’s body. Underneath that is a tubular space frame chassis and an aluminum floor pan. All in, the Owl weighs just 1,875lb. That’s basically the same as a Smart ForTwo and a labrador retriever.
Aspark is still developing the Owl, but it’s good to see it moving six months after its debut at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show, unlike many other examples of supercar vaporware. It plans to build 50 vehicles, at a faintly eye-watering $4.4m price for each example.
