This is the Evolution RS. It’s comes from a small but richly storied company in the UK that hand builds rather compact sports cars for a modest number of lovely and agreeable customers. The RS looks like many versions of the Evolution that has come before such as the GTR and EVO.
The RS, though, is a little more different than those others. It’s got more - more stuff. Up to 894kW, for example. But also less stuff thanks to many a component, including all its aero bits, from its typically glass fibre composite body being swapped out for carbon fibre.
There exists hypercars out there that are solely designed to deliver brain-frying levels of performance. The kind you’d need a week’s nap and therapy sessions to start recovering from. But the power-to-weight ratio the Ultima Evolution RS must reach a heretofore inaccessible dimension.
Right behind the unbelievably tight passenger cell, which is hilariously designed fits two humans somehow, is a supercharged Chevrolet LT5 V8 nicked from a Corvette ZR1. At 6.2-litres, the engine occupies the entire second half of the vehicle, basically.
For that reason, the driving position is so far forward and slung low that one must ignore any impulses of self-preservation and eschew all cowardice to fully exploit the car and the full spectrum of performance it can deliver. It’s a 930-ish kilogram go-kart with a demon grafted onto its back. And it’s road legal. And you should buy one.
Power reaches the rear-wheels via a Porsche-sourced manual 6-speed transmission. To cope with the supercharged fury, the people of Ultima in Leicestershire have kindly fitted the RS with very wide 19-inch alloys wearing Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres that barely fit within the wheel wells.
They say that 100km/h comes rushing up in just 2.3 seconds, sailing past 250km/h in about 9 seconds and is capable of a top speed of indeterminate value as the limits of human capacity in a 1,200hp go-kart are found to experience odd glitches past 400km/h. We might find out, alas, one day.
To stop, and we imagine there will be plenty of need for that, the RS is fitted with 322mm AP Racing rotors (362mm optional) with 4 or 6-pot callipers. Brake bias is mildly adjustable, as are many of its aerodynamics package.
This car is all about sensation, pure and visceral. That is clear. It might seem out of place, old-fashioned, in an era of sheltered and sanitised electric vehicles and artificial intelligence-aided advertising. However, considering what it offers, this writer cannot imagine a world where sensory overwhelm by the cacophony of internal combustion on wheels is dismissed. The terror and the joy, often simultaneously, cannot be ignored.
Some things cannot be replaced, and the Ultima RS is an example of this intagibility. No, I have not driven one. I question if I am even capable.
