Rodin FZero is promised to be the faster track car money can buy

Car makers often make big promises, though none quite as large as the one being touted by a new up-and-coming brand from New Zealand.  

Rodin Cars has vouched that its all-new model arriving next year will be able to obliterate anything else with four wheels around a circuit when it arrives next year.

The performance car manufacturer this month confirmed its FZero hypercar will be in production in 2023… and when the ultra-exclusive track model arrives it will be the fastest thing a paying customer can buy – granted their pockets are deep enough.

Bosses creating the futuristic vehicle say it won’t be restricted by road laws or racing regulations. Instead, it will be produced solely to clock the fastest lap times ever seen from a car sold to the public.

The FZero is the second model from the automotive newcomer, following in the tyre tracks of its $650,000 FZed that arrived back in 2019.

The latter is the closest thing customers can get to a bona fide F1 machine, though with power generated by a 3.9-litre Cosworth-developed V8 engine rather than the V6 hybrids used by Lewis Hamilton and co.

Yet the FZero due to go into production next year will eclipse even that when it arrives next summer. 

It will not be street legal, though there is talk of a road-going version being made after the track-only cars have passed through its assembly lines.

The FZero track weapon will feature Rodin’s newly-developed 4.0-litre V10 twin-turbo hybrid drivetrain that generates a colossal 1,160bhp and revs to an ear-splitting 10,000rpm.

Fully fuelled and brimmed with oil, it will tip the scales at just 698kg. To put that into perspective, that’s around the same weight as a dinky mk1 Mini.

The combination of grunt and lightness means the power-to-weight ratio will trump every hypercar on the market today, and plenty of racing machinery too.

With the throttle pinned and the car flat out, Rodin says the top speed will exceed 224mph – which goes some way to explain why it won’t be allowed on the road, in this guise at least.

Each of limited-run cars will have an eight-speed gearbox produced by UK specialist firm Ricardo.

Stopping power comes from full-carbon brakes discs with titanium calipers as part of a regenerative system that uses deceleration forces to pump additional energy into the hybrid-powertrain’s battery.

The wheels are bespoke 18-inch forged magnesium rims from OZ Racing that are produced to F1 standards – and while they don’t have to be finished in gold, they do look pretty special in the render images of the car. 

Tyres are Avon slicks, though customers will also be able to get wets if they’re using their bonkers hypercar on track in less than desirable conditions.

With its Batmobile-like design, the enormous wings and flat floor can produce up to 4,000kg of downforce, meaning it should be able to reproduce cornering G-forces that most humans’ vertebrae will struggle to cope with. 

The driver is enclosed in single-seater cockpit with a canopy that makes up its jet-fighter-like structure. 

It is being built exclusively for those who are both rich enough to afford a potent circuit-only toy and looking for the fastest experience money can possibly buy.

Just 27 track-only cars will be produced for customers with a reported asking price in the region of £1.8million.

For that sizable seven-figure sum buyers will get a vehicle that offers ‘ultimate performance’ that is ‘far beyond that of anything seen before,’ the manufacturer says.

Rodin Cars adds that it is making the FZero ‘without restrictions of road laws or race series regulations’ with performance that ‘would otherwise be unobtainable’, with a singular goal of being faster around a circuit than any other car on the planet ‘without exception’.

‘The Rodin FZero is the physical representation of the ultimate heights in vehicle performance,’ explains David Dicker, founder of Rodin Cars, which has recently set up a new UK base at the Donington Park racing circuit in the midlands. 

‘Without the restrictions of building to a set of rules, we are able to make the car lighter, more powerful, and produce significantly more downforce. 

‘The only real restrictions we face are the laws of physics, and we have even pushed those to the absolute limit. We look forward to bringing the most intense driving experience conceivable to tracks around the world.’

Buyers will be able given free reign to customise and configure their cars, right down to Rodin Cars setting up each one specifically to the owner’s driving style and prepare them for the circuits they will most commonly be visiting.

They’ll also get racewear services, vehicle storage and delivery, and full driver training at Rodin’s three picturesque private race tracks, which are based at its New Zealand headquarter on a remote 550-hectare property in the South Island.