Words by Dionysis Nanos
We all know and love the Ford GT40, Ford's and Carroll Shelby's Ferrari-eating masterpiece that triumphed at Le Mans from 1966 to 1969. It became an automotive icon, and naturally many people decided to capitalize on its fame and race-winning glory by being firm believers of the phrase "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", and making countless rip-offs, known better with their more artistic names as replicas. There have been different kinds of GT40 replicas, that used Rover or Buick V8s, but up until the 90s there was not even one car that could be described as the GT40s spiritual successor. Sure, there was Ford’s GT90 concept, that came out in 1995 and served as the inspiration for the Ford GT, but no one has ever heard of the Spectre R42, a car that was revealed in 1992 and was, you guessed it, designed to be a modern GT40.
The R42, was the brainchild of one Ray Christopher, a car designer associated with GT Development, a British company that was known for building near perfect replicas of the GT40. Christopher envisioned his creation as a modern GT40, meaning it would have all of the original's party tricks, mainly the mid mounted V8 and the low slung body, but brought up to 90s technological standards. Even the name he chose, R42, paid homage to the GT40, and specifically to the 42 inches of height the original had, while the R stood for his name, Ray. And oh did Ray have high hopes for his design. He wanted to take his car Le Mans racing, where it would of course emerge victorious just like the car he took his inspiration from, and in theory, he had a reason to believe that, as the R42 had a drag coefficient of just 0,28, which was almost best in class. Moreover, the car incorporated styling cues from such legends as the Lamborghini Countach, the Jaguar XJR-15 and the Ferrari 288 GTO. So you have a modern GT40 that will triumph in Le Mans. Everyone is happy, end of story right? Ehhhm… not really
The R42’s interior
In order for the car to be eligible to race, a limited production run was required, which meant that the initial design had to be further developed. The development costs of the R42 though were so high that GT Development went bust after only one working prototype had been made. The R42's future remained uncertain, until 1995, when the American company Spectre Motors, took over the R42 project. Spectre was headed by Anders Hildebrand, GT Development's former sales agent, and he immediately set out to produce the R42 as quickly as possible. And he wasn’t fooling around either. He brought in investors, reorganized production, and even made 5-time Le Mans winner Derek Bell chairman and development consultant. But most importantly, he launched the ALCO-Spectre racing programme in order for the R42 to have a team waiting for it when it would finally be put into production. Finally, the R42’s fight towards glory was well underway… and it lasted a good 12 seconds before everything came crashing down.
As there were time limitations, Spectre had to raid seemingly every company’s parts bin in order to… you know… make the car. So the R42 ended up having the door handles and the front indicators of the Toyota MR2, the tail lights of the Honda Legend and various interior bits like air vents from the Ford Fiesta! At least there was a bit of Ford spirit in the whole project after all. I know what you’ll say. “Almost every supercar maker used bits from other brands”, and I will agree. But none had the shocking variety of the R42. And at least if it was well built together it would have been fine, but journalists at the time kept saying that while the mechanics and the set up were impressive, in general the car had the build quality of a Bulgarian prison. Speaking of mechanics though, the car used a 4.6 litre Ford V8, which made 350 hp and 430 Nm of torque, mated to a 5-speed manual, cause these were the days of proper supercar making. It also used fancy independent suspension and adjustable anti roll bars, on top of which sat an all fiberglass body. But even that wasn’t enough in the end.
They even made a movie about it!
During its 3 year run only 23 R42s were made, partly because initial interest plummeted after the car kept getting delayed with many investors abandoning the project and partly because every car took more than two thousand hours to be built. In a last ditch attempt to drive up sales, Spectre even had the car star in a movie… albeit a very average one. The movie, released in 1998, and called RPM, starred David Arquette and former Bond girl Famke Janssen (yes, the “she always liked a good squeeze” Bond girl), but just after the movie hit the screens, Spectre went into receivership, crippled by the enormous development costs of the R42 from which it never recovered. And the racing programme scheduled to launch the R42 into greatness? While a version of the R42 had been made to race in Le Mans in 1997, that never happened as the company simply didn’t have enough money.
And so the R42 left this sad and unfair world, never to be the modern GT40 its creators envisioned it to be. And its a pity really cause as… odd as it looked it has some very strong specs that could potentially lead it to Le Mans fame but we may never know. At least it left us with a David Arquette film that might be a bit better than Ready To Rumble. That has to mean something…