TARGA: Aussie supercar to debut in Targa Tassie

Australian supercar company Joss plans to debut its new $600,000 JP1 super-coupe at the 2016 Targa Tasmania, before conquering Germany's infamous Nurburgring.

In the making for more than a decade, Joss envisages its hard-core 340km/h supercar as a direct rival for some of the world's finest from McLaren, Pagani, Ferrari, Porsche and even Koenigsegg.

However, it is relying on almost $500,000 of crowd-sourced funding via the Kickstarter portal to make it a production reality.

The new mid-engined, rear-drive supercar weighs just 900kg but will be powered by a 5.0-litre quad-cam V8 pumping out up to 440kW of power and around 560Nm.

Matt Thomas, the founder of Joss Developments, told motoring.com.au that it would be a dream come true to compete against European supercars in the 2016 Targa Tasmania.

"I really hunger to go down to Targa Tasmania. I always wanted to race the Joss supercar there. We're in talks with CAMS at the moment to see about a strategy to be applicable," he said.

"The fact that there's talk that McLarens are coming out, Paganis and what not, we really want to represent as an Australian car at Targa," said Thomas, who has previously worked for Aston Martin and BMW, and in F1 motorsport.

The car will be packaged with a unique Albins multi-speed seamless transmission built in Victoria, AP Racing brakes, Michelin tyres and a veritable cornucopia of carbon composite parts to keep weight low.

"We are extremely excited to help Joss in bringing their Australian supercar to life and hopefully see it take on the world at the 25th Anniversary running of Targa Tasmania in 2016," stated Mark Perry, Event Director, Targa Australia Pty Ltd.

"Targa Tasmania is the world's ultimate tarmac rally and provides the perfect environment for the supercars of the world to showcase their technology and awesome performance.

"We have seen Porsche win no fewer than nine times and seen Lamborghini with their awesome Gallardo dominate the event in recent years. Of course, who could ever forget the now legendary Honda NSX winning the first two Targa’s held in 1992 and 1993," added Perry.

The Joss founder revealed the new strategy that focusses on developing the JP1 racecar first, instead of the previous funding model, which unsuccessfully sought to raise around $5 million to fund road car production.

Testing of the tyre-frying supercar is scheduled to begin in late 2015. A competitive debut in Tasmania the following year would then be followed by a production car in 2018 or 2019, but not before the ambitious car-maker takes on the world's most challenging circuit, the Nurburgring.

Thomas explained that once the car had been developed, raced and sold in Australia in small numbers, the approach would be to take a car to the UK, where under special legislation low-volume race cars can be made road legal with only minor adjustments.

"What we aim to do is get the JP1 small volume compliant in the UK. That will enable us to sell into the UK and Europe, but most importantly it will allow us to get an official Nurburgring lap time, which is where we see everything at.
"That's our target," said Thomas, who confirmed that the car will use plenty of Bosch electronic technology from Europe, including launch control, traction control and so on.

"It's an apples for apples comparison at the Nurburgring. We show the world exactly what we can do -- we're on level playing field, even though we're down on the southern end of the field," he laughed.

"We see that as a foothold then to keep moving forward with sales of the track vehicles. Then in the background we can develop a fully ADR [Australian] compliant road car.

"It'll take a couple more years to do the road car properly. We see that as a much more robust way to go forward, instead of just standing here, trying to raise millions of dollars in investment for full road car productionisation," stated Thomas.

Thomas first came up with the idea of the Joss supercar in 1998 and by 2004 had built the first JT1 test car, which then went on to star in several video games including the Project Gotham Racing and Forza franchises on the Xbox 360.

The JP1 will be a completely different beast to the JT1, says Thomas, who wouldn't reveal if the 5.0-litre V8 engine would be sourced from Ford.

"We can't say what the base engine is, but we're using a proven engine that we develop further ourselves. That engine with the Albins gearbox will be mind boggling. It's basically a 2.6-second saving around most tracks," he said.

"This car will be an absolute beast compared to the old one. It enables us to get up and running," he said, noting that people who pledge various amounts on the Kickstarter campaign benefit in various ways.

Attracting $11,000 in its first two days, the crowd-funding campaign started on August 21 and runs for 40 days. Investors who lay down $10 or more get a gift, while those who drop $8000 or more will be among the first to ride in the JP1 supercar during testing of the first prototype in late 2015. They will also get a book and an invite to the media launch of the vehicle.

Check out the Joss JP1 Kickstarter project here.

And if the crowd-funding campaign fails to achieve its $480,000 goal?

"We'd be in dire straights, to be honest," admits Thomas.

"There needs to be no misconception. We're not a bunch of rich kids building a car. We're struggling day in and day out. I put absolutely everything that I have into this project. We have overheads like any company. We really need to get up and boogy now or Australia will lose this opportunity."