While automakers love to fit aggressive-looking rear wings to their cars, and often claim that they help them stick to the pavement, the reality is that few street cars generate much downforce. The all-time champion was the Dodge Viper ACR, the sorta-streetable special that wowed us at Lightning Lap a couple of years ago and which we’re told could generate up to 2000 pounds of downforce with its wing turned to its most aggressive angle. More recently, McLaren has said that the upcoming street version of its Senna hypercar will make up to 1764 pounds. But now there’s another member of this aero club in the considerably more svelte form of the Dallara Stradale. This wind-tunnel-tuned Italian lightweight can produce 881 pounds of downforce in its standard form and a massive 1808 pounds when wearing its optional rear wing. All while still being street legal—in Europe, at least.

The Stradale is Dallara’s first road car, and it may well be the only model the famous Italian motorsports engineering concern ever sticks its name on. Its creation was the result of company founder Giampaolo Dallara’s long-held ambition to make his “own” car. Its finished form is elegant confirmation that, as Dallara himself told us last year, despite having worked for both Enzo Ferrari and Ferruccio Lamborghini, his greatest engineering hero has always been Colin Chapman. There’s something very Lotus-y about the finished Stradale; indeed, it bears a strong similarity to the current Lotus 3-Eleven.

We did a technical story on the Stradale when its maker first showed it last year, and now we have driven it, both on some of the more demanding roads of the Italian province of Lecce and also on the handling course of the vast Nardò test track.

With or Without a Windshield

While the basic Stradale is a windshield-less barchetta, buyers will also be able to add optional weather protection in the form of a heavily curved windshield reminiscent of a Group C racer (called the roadster configuration), a central roof T-bar (the targa), and polycarbonate gullwing-opening “doors” (the coupe). These can be added or removed by owners with minimal tools, as can the vast, carbon-fiber wing that is also on the options list. (It’s anticipated that most buyers will spring for all four items.) The two cars we drove in Italy were roadsters with the windshield but no roof bar or doors; the track version also had the wing.

Fripperies are kept to a minimum. The Stradale has no real doors, for instance, so climbing in means throwing a leg over the low body side and onto the helpful STEP HERE legend at the seat’s base before wriggling behind the steering wheel. The driving position could be politely described as cozy, with all but the shortest drivers likely to have the adjustable pedal box and steering column moved to their most generous positions. The seat itself doesn’t move. Apart from some modest padding here and there, pretty much every surface is carbon fiber.

Power comes from a version of the Ford Focus RS’s EcoBoost turbocharged 2.3-liter inline-four. Reworked by Bosch, it produces 395 horsepower when High Power mode is selected; it defaults to a gentler 296 ponies at startup. There’s no shortage of performance in either mode, given the combination of the engine’s solid low-down torque and the Stradale’s light weight. But although throttle response is keen and the engine pulls hard, the powerplant lacks the sort of manners we would expect to find in an Italian thoroughbred. Power delivery is boosty, as it is in the RS, with a swelling sensation as turbo pressure builds. Our test car also exhaled through an optional sport exhaust that bordered on the boorish, being notably loud and with a fusillade of pops and bangs accompanying every lift off the throttle.

The street drive took place on the busy SP358 road from Porto Badisco to Castro Marina, a tight, narrow coastal byway right at the tip of the heel of Italy’s boot. It turned out to be a magnet for locals on high-powered motorbikes, many of whom were happy to take crazy risks to get a closer look at this exotic interloper. The Stradale coped well with the challenge of a real stradale, with impressive ride quality for something with such a hard-core mission. The steering is brilliant—unassisted and with copious feedback, growing stiffer as speed builds and the downforce starts to come into play. Even with minimal aerodynamic assistance, grip levels are high, with the front biting into tight turns at high speeds without complaint and the rear axle able to digest big throttle applications in low gears with almost no slip. There is stability control, but it rarely intervenes on the road.

There are some complaints. First is with the brake pedal, which is overassisted and lacking in feel. Retardation is plentiful by way of the cast-iron rotors—Dallara does not believe that carbon-ceramic discs would make a substantive difference—but the car would be far better suited by a firmer point of contact. The gear selector for the standard six-speed manual gearbox also is a mite too far back in the cabin, cricking elbows during shifts into the even-numbered ratios. It would be nice to have something better than the Focus RS’s shift knob, too.

Track Time

Such niggles are quickly rendered insignificant when we get to drive on the track in a bewinged prototype sitting on more aggressive (but still street-legal) Pirelli Trofeo R tires. Downforce, to paraphrase the late Rick James, is a hell of a drug. The handling course at the Nardò test center has been a playground for generations of chassis engineers, with its 3.8-mile-long circuit offering a far trickier challenge than the typical proving ground. Yet it’s one that the Stradale makes feel far too easy.

It’s soon obvious that the primary limitation for the Stradale on track will be the driver rather than the car. While the Stradale is only getting close to peak downforce at the end of the main straight—at 150 mph or so according to the digital instrument display—that’s more than enough help from the unseen hand of God to allow it to negotiate the ultra-fast Turn 1 left-hander without lifting, although it took several laps to build up the confidence to do so. But even on the slower parts of the track there is enough aero assistance to allow impossible-feeling entry speeds and huge lateral loads. Dallara claims the Stradale develops up to 2.00 g’s of lateral acceleration.

The ride gets firmer as the car is squashed closer to the asphalt; the development team says that under full aero load the car is pretty much sitting on its bump stops. The steering grows heavier, too, becoming an upper-body workout as speed rises. The car we drove on track had the optional automated manual gearbox with steering-wheel-mounted shift paddles, and it seemed to be defter in its shifts than is the norm for an automated single-clutch transmission. The brake pedal still felt too soft, though.

The overall experience was close to that of a full-fledged race car, only in a vehicle wearing a license plate. The Stradale might give away several hundred horsepower to brawnier supercars, but it will almost certainly obliterate most of them on lap times.

The No-Dealership Deal

Dallara plans to produce no more than 600 Stradales over the next five years, with roughly 70 already ordered. The company looked seriously at offering the car in the United States but decided the costs of federalization were too high. (Doing so would have doubled the roughly 25-million-euro development budget.) European buyers will have to deal directly with the factory, as Dallara doesn’t have a dealership network; customers also will have to pay something close to Ferrari money for the privilege. Load a Stradale with the optional windshield, roof bar, doors, wing, adjustable dampers, and a set of Trofeo R tires, and it will run €191,000 (approximately $236,000) before Italy’s 22 percent sales tax is added.

Yet, providing they take their cars on the track occasionally, we don’t think buyers will feel short-changed.

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