The first example of the Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus 007 Hypercar prototype that will race in the FIA World Endurance Championship has started production ahead of its competition debut on September 5, 2020.

Although a few lingering details have yet to be finalized by the sanctioning bodies behind the WEC and the 24 Hours of Le Mans event, Glickenhaus and his multi-national team has enough info to start the construction process.

“Oh, it's already begun,” the trailblazing New Yorker told Road and Track. “The basic rules that we have to homologate to have been in place for quite a while. The weight, the size, the propulsion, whether it's going to be purely an ICE engine or a hybrid engine, what the [power] outputs have to be, that has been in place. So, we are building the car.”

Set to battle with Aston Martin’s Valkyrie Hypercar, Toyota’s unnamed Hypercar, and other brands in the FIA WEC’s replacement for the LMP1 class, Glickenhaus will represent one of the smaller outfits to embrace the novel build-it-or-modify-it regulations.

A rendering of the SCG 007, SCG

Like Aston Martin, SCG will use a race-prepped road-going vehicle as the basis for its WEC Hypercar program. Toyota, the Rebellion-Peugeot outfit when it arrives in 2022, and the bizarre ByKolles team run by Romanian-German dentist Colin Kolles, which has declared its intent to build its own Hypercars, are expected to use the option to manufacture custom new models designed for the race track. Naturally-aspirated, turbocharged, and hybrid engine solutions are welcome in the WEC’s build-it-or-modify-it formula.

The SCG 007 Hypercar will fall into the turbocharged internal combustion engine (ICE) category, and while Glickenhaus has declined to name the car’s engine partner, rumors of a tie-in with Alfa Romeo and a twin-turbo V6 persist.

“We have begun a massive engineering designing process,” he said. “We have engines that will be running on the dynos in a matter of weeks as we try to reach the required 830 horsepower in the ICE engine, and [achieve the] endurance, too. Now, that's not easy to do from 2.9 liters. So, we are really working very hard to accomplish that. But we think we will. We have elected to go frankly, with simply an ICE engine. One reason is that it's going to be easier to meet the minimum weight requirements without the batteries and the hybrid system.”

The FIA WEC will use a performance balancing system to keep Hypercars equipped with instant-torque kinetic energy recovery systems (KERS) from manhandling the ICE-only entries like the SCG 007 under initial acceleration.

“I think it will give us a more balanced car, because we will be able to not have to stuff a lot of batteries into it,” Glickenhaus continued. “And we think that it will be a simpler car, will be the less complicated, it will be easier for us to do. We have done hybrid cars in the FIA Championship Cup with a hybrid version of P4/5 Competizione, which was using a Magnetti Marelli Formula 1 hybrid system. But, and it's not that we couldn't do it, but we just feel that this is the way to go.”

Testing of the SCG 007 Hypercar is expected to start a few months before the first race. If any manufacturing or supply interruptions take place, the car’s FIA WEC debut could be delayed.

“We have a gearbox sourced, and we have made a deal with a very famous aerodynamic wind tunnel company to begin the tweaking of our designs that we’ve shown,” Glickenhaus said. “And we are working with our engine manufacturer on the exact look of the car, because it will frankly have some design cues from their product, and will be co-branded Glickenhaus and them. And so, we've begun.

“Our goal is to have the car on the ground early July and be testing it. And then to see how quickly we will be able to join the WEC, and then be at Le Mans [in 2021]. Whether we can make the first WEC race I'm not sure, but we definitely will be in the WEC end of Le Mans.”



This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io