A range-topping version of the Radical RXC road-legal track car will be shown off at next month's Geneva motor show.
The Radical RXC Turbo 500 boasts "more than 530bhp" at 6100rpm and 481lb ft at 5000rpm, and will be used for another crack at the production road car lap record of the Nürburgring Nordschleife in the summer. It will be targeting its own record of 6min 48sec, which was established back in 2009.
The Peterborough-based sports car firm reckons the new derivative, which has a power-to-weight ratio of more than 462bhp per tonne, "takes the RXC’s performance into true hypercar territory".
It also says it is "the culmination of five years’ development to create a road-legal track car unlike any other". The RXC Turbo 500 can accelerate from 0-100mph in 6.8sec, and 40-80mph in 3.0sec.
Like the RXC Turbo revealed at Autosport International last month, Ford's twin-turbo 3.5-litre V6 Ford EcoBoost engine is at the heart of the RXC Turbo 500.
A package of upgrades has teased more performance out of the standard RXC Turbo's powertrain, which drives the rear wheels through a bespoke RPE/Quaife seven-speed paddle-shift gearbox.
Among the tweaks, the RXC Turbo 500 has a brace of high-performance water-cooled Garrett GT28 turbochargers, an optimised engine management system, a motorsport-specification exhaust system, custom-designed heat shields to reduce engine bay temperatures and remachined intake manifold. Radical says the latter system, developed in-house, is being adopted on the Ford GT.
Owners will be able to specify the tweaks as an upgrade package on the existing RXC Turbo, prices for which start at £129,000. The price of the upgrade kit will be revealed at the Geneva motor show next month.
Radical boss Phil Abbott said: “Our outstanding technical team wanted to deliver something really special in the RXC Turbo 500, and they’ve definitely moved the game on. The partnership between the RXC’s accessible aerodynamics and grip, and the ballistic performance of the Turbo 500’s high-performance Ford EcoBoost powerplant delivers an intoxicating, spectacular driving experience like no other road car.”
Radical has achieved full European type approval for the RXC Turbo, which can now be road-registered in any European Community member state as well as a host of other countries worldwide.
The new Radical RXC Turbo 500 brings the number of RXC derivatives to five. It joins the RXC Spyder, RXC V8, RXC Turbo and RXC 3.7 V6 versions.
The Norschleife attempt will take place in August. Radical will drive the car to the German circuit to prove its road-worthiness, and complete the first of three lap record attempts on the Dunlop rubber the car is wearing when it arrives at the track.
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