GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: Glickenhaus SCG003

The Glickenhaus SCG003 won’t be the first sports car to ape the Italian classics with backing from big American money, ambition and passion.

But it may well be the best. Very few of the previous attempts at a cross-Atlantic supercar have been driven by anybody with a tenth of the sports car knowledge and respect for history as James Glickenhaus.

Based around a lightweight, Dallara-engineered carbon-fibre tub, the SCG003 has been designed as a modular supercar that uses either twin-turbo V6 power or a biturbo V12.

Glickenhaus’s new supercar will debut in Geneva in both SCG003S (Stradale, or road) and SCG003C (Competizione, or race) forms, with high hopes that it will be given the experimental Box 56 for the 2016 Le Mans 24-Hour race.

It’s been Glickenhaus’s dream to build a throwback sports car that can be driven to the track in street form, fettled for the track, raced, refettled for the road and driven home again, quickly and easily, by almost anybody with basic tools.

The modular-designed SCG003 weighs around 1200kg in road trim, complete with a derivation of Honda’s HPD 3.5-litre V6 pumping out more than 450kW of power and at least 750Nm of torque.

Rather than claim a Nurburgring lap time, like most of the mainstream sports car makers, Glickenhaus will simply enter the SCG003C in the track’s 24-hour race in May. He is also targeting the Le Mans 24-Hour and the Bathurst 12-Hour, among others.

The competizione version will weigh more, at around 1350kg, and features a hard-core Hewland paddle-shift gearbox, adjustable KW dampers for the otherwise near-standard pushrod suspension system, Bosch Motorsport electronics and Dunlop race rubber.

Glickenhaus, a former B-movie producer and screenwriter turned finance magnate, expects to start delivering cars later this year and is already taking orders. Pricing will begin at around $US2 million for the road car, with another million buying the race version.

The SCG003 is his third automotive project, with the first being road and race versions of Ferrari road cars, built with unique Pininfarina bodywork.

One of America’s best-known car collectors, Glickenhaus own the oldest Ferrari in existence and a fleet of classic road and race cars, from Ferraris to Lolas and Porsches.