NZ Supercar ready to launch
Former F1 champion Denny Hulme remembered with supercar built in his honourAfter seven years of planning and prototypes New Zealand's Hulme supercar has finally turned its wheels in anger. Ex-Ferrari Grand Prix driver Chris Amon drove the Hulme CanAm sportscar at the A1GP race meeting in Taupo on Friday.
The Hulme CanAm is an open top version of the original Hulme supercar dreamed up by Kiwi entrepreneur Jock Freemantle (more here). And while the original closed cockpit car never made it past the prototype stage, the CanAm Amon drove is a fully operating pre-production car.
Freemantle and his team of New Zealand automotive experts have made a number of changes to the CanAm over the previous model. The BMW 5.0-litre V8 engine has been replaced with 7.0-litre Chevrolet powerplant that produces 447kW and 600Nm. The engine is mated to a six-speed sequential gearbox and bolted into a carbon composite chassis that weighs less than 1000kg.
Production is due to commence in 2010 with a target price of over $580,000 (Euro 295,000). It is understood a Coupe version would follow after that if the car proves popular. The car has been designed to be a road-legal track car.
Freemantle started Supercars Limited, the company responsible for the car, in 2001. He wants to build the car as a tribute to Denny Hulme, New Zealand's only Formula One world champion.
The CanAm is an appropriate name for the open-top car as Hulme was a two-time champion of the Can-Am sportscar series in the late 1960s and early '70s.
Hulme won 22 Can Am races driving for fellow New Zealander Bruce McLaren's team.
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