By: IOL Motoring Staff
Santa Ana, California - If there is one thing every petrolhead believes, it is that, given the resources, he could build a better (or lighter, or faster) sports-car.
Very few, however, get as far as putting your money where their mouth is - but one who has, is Ferris Rezvani, with a little help from designer Samir Sadikhov, creator of the Ferrari Xezri and Aston Martin DBC concepts.
What he did was to take a British-built Ariel Atom open-frame track day special and have Sadikhov clothe it in a carbon-fibre body that covered just enough of the running gear to make it street-legal, and looked as if it was hitting Warp Factor 1 just standing there.
Then he bolted a Rotrex supercharger on top of the Atom's 2.4-litre Honda K24 engine and leaned on the wastegate until it gave him 500 American horsepower (370kW in real terms) - on an open two-seater that weighed just 750kg with a full tank of gasoline.
IMPRESSIVE PERFORMANCE
He called it, appropriately, the Beast. Its performance was, to say the least, impressive, hitting 100km/h from standstill in just 2.7 seconds.
A production version of the Beast will cost you $159 000 (R2.2 million), or Rezvani will convert your Ariel Atom to Beast specification for $69 000 (R950 000).
Now Rezvani has come up with a slightly less brutal version called the Beast Speedster. Its trim is a little less haute couture and the Rotrex blower blows more gently, to deliver 'only' 221kW at 7650 revs, backed by 305Nm at 5850rpm.
By California street-car standards, it's still an exciting ride, capable of 0-100km/h in 3.5 seconds, but it is more controllable in amateur hands, and significantly more affordable at $139 000 (R1.9 million).