SCG003 rocks the 'Ring

If it didn't have the attention of the big supercar makers after its Geneva Motor Show debut, the SCG003 sure has it now.

James Glickenhaus's slightly Quixotic supercar just destroyed the production car lap record on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, hacking 15 seconds out of the record of 6:57 set by Porsche's hybrid 918 Spyder last year.

The low-slung, carbon-fibre supercar has just ticked the clock over at 6:42 - good enough to rip five full seconds out of the time set by another very low volume "production" car, the Pagani Zonda R.

Though it's difficult to put Glickenhaus's SCG003 into the same category of "production" car as the Porsche, the American-financed, Italian-built supercar is road legal and available for anybody with a cheque of around US$2.6 million or €2.3 million (AUD $3.4 million).

And that's not all. Given that it is designed from the ground up to exploit every loophole in the GT3 racing regulations, the SCG003 road car has plenty of tuning in its chassis and Glickenhaus is targeting a 6:30 time – precisely the same figure that's in the bullseye for yet-another very low volume production car, the Koenigsegg Agera RS.

Jim Glickenhaus's Instagram posting to celebrate the lap record offered up some disconcerting news for its rivals, though. Glickenhaus asserted the record was set with a horsepower restriction in place and with the SCG003 carrying weight ballast to match up to GT3's "Balance of Performance" regulations, which also cover engine management and aerodynamics to even out the racing field.

With its street power and weight, Glickenhaus says it should "kiss 6:30". That's largely because the racing version of the SCG003 weighs the GT3 minimum of 1350kg while the road car is just 1200kg.

That, and it uses an unrestricted 450kW, 750Nm version of the car's adapted Honda HPD 3.5-litre turbo motor. By contrast, Koenigsegg's all-carbon Agera RS uses a biturbo, 5.0-litre V8 which, it claims, produces 865kW of power and 1280Nm of torque and is said to be good for 410km/h. Glickenhaus makes no top-speed claims for his SCG003.

Glickenhaus has plans to bring the SCG003 to Australia for next year's Bathurst 12 Hour, but ultimately wants to race its successor in the Le Mans 24 Hour – after driving it there in road-legal trim first.

"It's faster than any production-based car in the world and on the road it's fast enough to get you incarcerated in any country in the world," the 64-year-old New York native told Motoring.com.au during the Geneva Motor Show.

"This would blow a McLaren P1 GTR, or anything else like that, away on any track in the world, but that's not a slight on the McLaren. It's a completely different idea of a car.

"You can't compare a GT3 race car with a road car. It won't just do 6:45 on the Nürburgring, but it will do it for 24 hours straight," he boasted.

And he wasn't far wrong on the time, now let's see how he goes on the "24 hours straight" part.

The first attempt at proving the SCG003's virtues as a racing car didn't quite go so well, with both of the team's cars black flagged at the most recent, ill-fated VLN race on the combined (Nordschleife and Grand Prix track) Nürburgring for allegedly exceeding the 130dBa noise limit.