The World's Fastest Lotus? - /TUNED

MATT FARAH: When we first started The Smoking Tire, I came up with a T-shirt. And on the back it said, "Yes officer, that was us." Now today, that slogan seems more appropriate than ever because this car behind me is more likely to send you to jail than anything I've ever driven. Now let me explain why. It's because this Lotus sitting behind me has a 50% better power-to-weight ratio than a Bugatti Veyron, the fastest car in the world. Now if you can imagine how crazy that is in a straight line, think about this. This car is widened by nine inches, on a stock wheelbase, and it weighs 2,150 pounds. Let that marinate for a second. It's hard to describe how it feels to drive a car with so much power and so little weight. But I'm going to try. But that's going to require a back story. I think that to properly understand this car, you need to hear the whole story. You need to meet Frank. We were supposed to drive this car weeks ago. But three days before the shoot, Frank called and told me he'd found metal in the oil pan. Long story short, the motor was out of the car, and the pistons were on a work bench. Not good. We shot the shop anyway, but we weren't prepared for what kind of shop built this car. For example, the Bugatti Veyron was built in a factory that's on a restored chateau estate in Molsheim, in France. I don't know where that is, but the name sounds expensive. This car was not built in a place like that. It was built in Lancaster, California. There's no grass anywhere. The shop is literally on the other side of the tracks, and the owner tells us, quote, "Things get interesting around here after dark. Why people are still in this town after the invention of cars and U-Haul trucks, I will never know." There's no sign, no tour, no white floors, and no chef. There's barely a bathroom. FRANK PROFERA: I've been screwing with cars since I was 19. I was a New York City cab driver. I kind of got an idea of what I didn't want to drive. And when I lived in New York at the time I had a Volkswagen camper and a CJ5 Jeep. But as soon as I moved to California in '79 and went through the canyons, it was like, OK. I've got to get a sports car. I've always looked at cars for acceleration rather than top speed. I've had GT40s, I've had 427 Cobras, a Lamborghini Miura SV. But my thing is driving in the canyons. And the fastest car I've owned in the canyons was my old Ford RS200 Evolution. And I built that up to 900 horsepower, and it did 0 to 60 in under two seconds. This car is faster. It's so fast because I met Mike, and then we started screwing with things. And Mike's kind of open-minded after you hit him with a hammer a couple of times. MIKE STAFFORD: It wasn't enough power. He wanted more. He wanted more. And he wanted more. Just a little bit more. And pretty soon we go from a Garrett 3076 to a Billet 6262. And then he says, well, the power is good, but now it's too slow. I can't accelerate in fifth gear. I'm like, you have more gears than that. He says, no, I want to be accelerating in fifth gear on the freeway, without any turbo lag. And I said, well, we don't have a whole lot of options, here. You have this size of turbo for your top-end power. I thought the lag actually wasn't that bad, but Frank had a different idea. And he came into the shop one day to complain about something because that's what Frank does. FRANK PROFERA: At first with the turbo alone, there was just massive lag up to about 4,200 RPM. And the only way to spool the turbo up faster was either to go smaller and then lose power, or come up with a compound system very much like the Lancia Delta S4, the Group B rally car from '86. They were the first to use a compound-charge setup in a four-cylinder application. And I, of course, borrowed that idea. MIKE STAFFORD: I had a supercharger setup on the Celica. And we were toying with the idea of combo-charging. We hadn't done it yet, just thinking about it. Frank says, I want that. I said, well, I just spent three months designing this for somebody else's car. I said, I can't build you one that fast. And so he goes, fine. Two days later he shows up at my shop with a VF supercharger kit and said, here, make this work. And so we cut the manifold all up because the plenum wasn't big enough. And we redesigned the air intake on it. And then we ended up proceeding to build an entire combo-charger system in about-- it showed up on a Tuesday, I think, and Friday night we drove the car. It was a little ridiculous. MIKE STAFFORD: Matt's going to scream like a little school girl. He's never been in anything this fast, and I don't care what he says. There's nothing that accelerates like this out of a corner. Nothing. There's no Evo, there's no Cobras, no GT40s, there's no Hennessey Venom. There's no bike that can pull out of a corner like this car. MATT FARAH: What kind of person would build a Lotus with 680 wheel horsepower? The only kind of person I can think of that would do that is someone who's used to crazy, over the top cars, and just had to have the fastest, nuttiest car anywhere. The power-to-weight ratio of a Veyron is 4.15 pounds per horsepower. The power-to-weight ratio of the E900 GTR is 3.89 pounds per horsepower. The power-to-weight ratio of a 1978 Lotus Formula One car is 2.8 pounds per horsepower. This? 2.7. I feel like I'm in Spaceballs. Ludicrous speed! Go! I swear, Yogurt lives in that shop somewhere. It's got liquid Schwartz. The Lotus Exige comes with a supercharger, makes 240 horsepower. Those who want to go faster traditionally swap out for a turbocharger. Frank was unsatisfied with either of those solutions and went with both. Now normally with a setup like that, you'd have to run race gas. But race gas is annoying and hard to find in California. So what Frank did is set up a dual-stage fuel system. So you fill up one tank with pump gas, and you fill up the other tank with isopropyl alcohol, just like you find at a CVS. And the combination of the two, once you get over a certain amount of boost, the alcohol kicks in. And it basically is an E85 setup on the fly. The shifter is about the shortest shifter I've ever used in my life. The rig he built for it is crazy, and it's connected to a Toyota MR2 transmission with a custom bellhousing. Now why go with a Toyota MR2 five speed instead of a six speed? Basically, it's the only transmission that would hold the power. And he's been through a few of them. This car is nine inches wider than stock. It's got crazy, custom suspension in it. It's got AP racing, giant brake kit. Here we go. [LAUGHS], yeah. A racing class that was canceled because the cars were too fast and people were dying, and that's his idea of a good time. Woohoo! I'll be honest. It's mine, too. This is the coolest sound ever. This is like the Fast and the Furious kids got some money. This thing is so wild. 2,150 pounds, over 700 horsepower in the crank, from a 1.8-liter engine. You know, everyone else wants to swap motors in these things, Hennessey strap-in twin-turbo V8s into them, changing the wheelbase. It's like a slot car. I used to race slot cars when I was a kid. And a slot car has tons of grip right up until it doesn't. And when you lose it, it flies off the track and hits somebody in the face. This is like that, but replace "track" with "road," and "face" with "cliff." On the one hand it's such a race car. It's so over the top, it's so fast and light and powerful, and everything comes through the steering wheel. On the other hand, the way the power is delivered is so simple and progressive that I'm not really ever surprised by it. You know, that GTR really jumped out and bit me in the ***. After five minutes behind the wheel in this, I'm carving canyons, I'm heel-toeing properly, the power comes on how I expect it to come on. And therefore, I'm surprised at how little the car feels like it wants to kill me. Is this probably the most customized Lotus in the world? I'm going to have to think, yes. But the dual-stage setup here is not gas and alcohol. It's actually rocket fuel and liquid Schwartz. That's so fast. It's an interesting car, this. People would say things like, too much power, or the power-to-weight ratio makes it uncontrollable or something. But I actually found it to be the opposite. I think that because the throttle is so progressive, because the power comes on predictably, it's strangely quite usable. I mean, it's not remotely practical, and it's loud and it breaks a lot. But once you're in it and once you're driving, it actually feels quite natural. And I sort of wish all Lotuses were like that, to tell you the truth. So one more drive, one more day, and the fastest car I've ever driven, once again. I'd like to thank Mike at Stafford Performance for having us out at his shop in Lancaster. I'd like to thank Frank for having us behind the wheel of his bat [BLEEP] crazy Lotus. And check out his website, lotussport.org. And until then, the only thing left to say is that this might be the world's fastest Lotus, unless John Hennessey wants to give us a call and we can find out for sure. Until next time, I'm Matt Farah. And you've been watching Tuned, right here on the Drive Network. [MUSIC PLAYING]