Sometimes only the finest of lines divides genius from madness. It's near that boundary that James Glickenhaus seems to have lived most of his life. His latest idea—as explained to us on the company's stand at the Geneva auto show—is a classic example. He wants to run a no-holds-barred competition at the Nürburgring to finally establish just which street-legal car is fastest around the ever-hyped Nordschleife circuit.

There is an ulterior motive. Glickenhaus is convinced this will prove that his own car, the roadgoing SCG 003S, will prove to be the quickest, on the not unreasonable grounds that it is closely based on the SCG 003C race car that has already proved itself in multiple endurance races at the 'Ring. (Glickenhaus is the enthusiast who took the Ferrari P4/5 by Pininfarina and evolved it into a racer, and he has since diversified into what is basically his own car company: Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus.) His proposition is compellingly simple—and compellingly mad at the same time:

"What I am proposing to do is to endow the Glickenhaus Road Cup, which will be run at the Nürburgring 24 hours [event] after the race cars qualify. Here are the rules: an individual has to own the car, so there's no bullshit, and it has to be road registered and legal. You start at Cologne and then drive to Nürburg on the same set of tires you will set a time on—they have to be real road tires, not those special tires that get dropped off in a safe. They have to be tires you can buy from [a place like] Tire Rack. Then everybody drives and sets a time, and whoever is fastest is the winner. That's it."

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Glickenhaus has already established a trophy for race cars, awarded to the Nürburgring 24 Hours contender that sets the fastest time in official qualifying. But he admits that this idea, which he hopes to run for the first time in 2018, doesn't have the official sanction of the Nürburgring authorities yet.

"They don't even know about it yet," he said. "They're reading about it in the press and they're going to be [saying], 'F—king Jim, what the hell is he doing?' But I'm serious. I'm going to make this happen. I can't get it together for this year. My idea is to have them yell and scream, 'How can you say you're going to do that? You're an idiot and an asshole, and we hate you.' Then they'll get over that, and we'll come back and race at the Nürburgring for next year. We're going to do it."

Glickenhaus's inspiration comes from his anger, sometimes volcanically expressed, about rival automakers' claimed Nordschleife times and the lack of independent verification, calling out Lamborghini's recent record-setting lap of 6:52:01 in the Huracán Performante for particular criticism.

"Let's talk about that," he said. "The standard Huracán was how much slower than the [Performante]? Thirty-five seconds. As a physicist and a skeptical person, let's say I'm [certainly] skeptical. Listen to the video, and you hear no tires squealing. Road tires squeal. End of discussion."

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Lamborghini recently claimed the production-car lap record at the Nürburgring, but Glickenhaus doubts the time's veracity.

He continued: "The next day, Pirelli said that these were specially developed road tires. Then they published that video, and the experts got onto it to say this didn't happen, we measured the velocities and the distances and the frame rates, [and] we don't believe it." (The experts cited by Glickenhaus are race driver Dale Lomas and YouTube personality Misha Charoudin, both intimately familiar with the German track; they've published their takes on the Lambo lap at Lomas's Bridge to Gantry website and on Charoudin's YouTube channel.)

Glickenhaus is in no doubt that his car is substantially quicker, and he is itching to have a chance to prove it. "We know its [race] sister can do a 6:20 lap," he said. "It did that with 580 horsepower, 220 pounds more downforce, and half a g more lateral cornering ability. But this car weighs the same and has 300 more horsepower and 250 lb-ft more torque. On race tires, it would be faster than the race car. It would go under 6:20. On road tires, it will be about 30 seconds a lap slower. So the fastest a road-legal car [would] go on real tires is about a 6:40."

When asked about his rivals, Glickenhaus did a nice line in trash talk. "I think they'll shit. I think they'll hate me like they already do," he said, before passing comment on Koenigsegg's failed attempt to break the record, foiled by both the Nürburgring authorities and a heavy crash in testing: "I love Christian [von Koenigsegg], he's a hell of a guy, but Koenigsegg's not me. He's not got an award from the Nürburgring for extraordinary passion or engineering." On Aston Martin's forthcoming Valkyrie: "They've said it's going to corner at four and a half g's. There's no car on road-legal tires that is cornering at above two g's, no matter what bullshit they tell you. It's the laws of physics."

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James Glickenhaus's 003C race car at the Nürburgring.

The forthcoming Mercedes-AMG Project One gets an easier ride, possibly because Glickenhaus is thinking of buying one. "They will make an incredible car, absolutely. Will it have an actual Formula 1 engine in some streetable configuration? I believe it will. Will it be road legal? They say yes. But do I think it will be as fast around the Nürburgring as my car? It may be as fast, but it won't be faster."

There's something of the fight impresario about Glickenhaus, stirring up controversy he hopes to profit from, although in terms of glory rather than money. Although a very wealthy man, he has already put plenty of his fortune where his mouth is, admitting to having spent more than $20 million on his 003C race and 003S road-car projects so far.

"Why? Because it's awesome fun," he said. "Because, when your time goes, it doesn't matter how much money you're left with, what's left is the memories you have. How many people get to do all this in a car with their name on it?"

Presuming this crazy idea gets off the ground, we definitely plan to be in attendance for the first running of the Glickenhaus Road Cup.

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