Forget Camaros, GT3s, and even forget the NIO EP9. Granted, this car is a a racer first and foremost and secondly a road car. It’s Jim Glickenhaus’ SCG003, and it’s a GT car that has an aero package more akin to that of an LMP-style machine. In short, its a bad M-F, and with 500-odd horsepower on tap from the Honda V6 and the talented Jeff Westphal at the wheel, it just snagged one of the fastest times at the Nordschleife recorded in recent years.

This incredible machine looks somewhere between a Radical, an LMP2 car, and a Ferrari Enzo. The last of which is a likely influence since Glickenhaus is a renowned Ferrari aficionado—having restyled a Enzo to his own liking years ago and suffered the consequences when it became too intriguing. Ferrari don’t like their customers meddling with their wares.

So instead of modify an existing car, Glickenhaus decided to build his own bespoke racer with the resilience needed for endurance events. Incidentally, it will be made for road use—the SCG003 will, with the help of modular parts, come in three iterations; a race-oriented Competizone, a road-ready Stradale, and a hardcore street car titled the Stradale Competizone. 

The particular car in-focus here is, predictably, the Competizione. Powered by a 3.5-liter Honda V6 fed by two turbochargers, 480 restricted horsepower, pushed through a Hewland six-speed sequential, drives the 2,950-pound machine down the road. Astonishingly, the power output and weight are handicapped figures in accordance with the Balance of Power rules—it could be much punchier, and the road car is estimated to chuck out 850 brake horsepower. However, to focus on the thrust this machine is capable of would be to miss the point entirely; the SCG003 is about so much more than straight line speed.

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As suggested by the massive dorsal fin, the louvers running alongside the rear clamshell, the wing mirrors sculpted to divert turbulent air away from the rear wing, and the mile-wide diffuser; this car is all about aerodynamics.

The SCG003C boasts an aerodynamic efficiency in excess of 3. Photo credit: scg003project.com

Thanks to plenty of development in the wind tunnel, the car’s frontal area has been minimized, the cockpit made snug and streamlined, and the total downforce generated is somewhere in the 2,200-pound region. With slick tires providing the adhesion, that amounts to 2.5-g cornering—hence the absurd speeds Mr. Westphal demonstrates the car is capable of.

Even it its loftiest setting, the SCG003 still produces staggering levels of downforce. Photo credit: justacarguy.blogspot.com

Even when forced to run with a higher ride-height setting, the car eats up curbs, remains settled over undulations on the 12.9-mile course, and still provides the grip to cover some of the faster corners at unbelievable speeds. Notice how the car refrains from ?t=2m12s”>hopping over the Flugplatz crest at 2:12, and is shoved into the concrete in the following right, allowing him to go flat well before the apex. Just as impressive is the sickening speed he can carry into the ?t=5m15s”>Karussell, which looks like it’s happy to loosen Westphal’s fillings as it transfers all that force through the uber-stiff carbon chassis. We can’t help but admire the man’s commitment to this searing lap, and that should excuse him from recording it with a dusty camcorder from the 1990s.