Photo: Ares Design
After presenting the S1 Project in September 2020, the Italians at Ares Design are back with another C8 Corvette with fancy clothes. Enter the S1 Project Spyder, a small-block V8 sports car with barchetta-like bodywork devoid of a windshield or a roof.
Crafted from carbon fiber from head to toe, the Italo-American land missile features two wind deflectors that redirect the incoming air over the occupants. The Modena-based coachbuilder says it has created “a virtual canopy” of sorts, which sounds eerily familiar to the Active Air Management System of the twin-turbo V8 McLaren Elva.
Louvers on the front fenders, intakes on the rear haunches, and a dual exhaust that exits through the rear deck are also featured, along with Pirelli rubber shoes wrapped around 10-spoke wheels. The rear end is even more dramatic than the front fascia, boasting a Bugatti-esque taillight and an intricate aerodynamic diffuser. The most striking thing about this C8-based concoction? Well, that would be the height.
The interior is similarly breathtaking, a reinterpretation of the mid-engine sports car from Kentucky that retains only a handful of the donor vehicle’s components. The most obvious of them all is the gear selector on the center tunnel which does not double as a transmission tunnel for pretty obvious reasons. As you all know, the eighth generation of the Corvette in Stingray flavor utilizes a Tremec dual-clutch transaxle.
“We created the S1 Project to bring the experience of driving a supercar back to a more authentic and visceral level, an experience that uses today's technologies and materials to rediscover sensations of yesteryear,” says the Italian boutique automaker. “But that wasn't enough for us. We wanted to create something even more essential, direct, and unfiltered. We wanted to create a car that was pure emotion.”
As with the coupe, only 24 examples of the barchetta will ever be produced. Ares Design quotes 705 horsepower (715 PS) and a redline of 8,800 rpm, which is an interesting development over the bone-stock engine. Those revs probably indicate a flat-plane crankshaft, which means that the small-block V8 motor sounds pretty different too.
Louvers on the front fenders, intakes on the rear haunches, and a dual exhaust that exits through the rear deck are also featured, along with Pirelli rubber shoes wrapped around 10-spoke wheels. The rear end is even more dramatic than the front fascia, boasting a Bugatti-esque taillight and an intricate aerodynamic diffuser. The most striking thing about this C8-based concoction? Well, that would be the height.
The interior is similarly breathtaking, a reinterpretation of the mid-engine sports car from Kentucky that retains only a handful of the donor vehicle’s components. The most obvious of them all is the gear selector on the center tunnel which does not double as a transmission tunnel for pretty obvious reasons. As you all know, the eighth generation of the Corvette in Stingray flavor utilizes a Tremec dual-clutch transaxle.
“We created the S1 Project to bring the experience of driving a supercar back to a more authentic and visceral level, an experience that uses today's technologies and materials to rediscover sensations of yesteryear,” says the Italian boutique automaker. “But that wasn't enough for us. We wanted to create something even more essential, direct, and unfiltered. We wanted to create a car that was pure emotion.”
As with the coupe, only 24 examples of the barchetta will ever be produced. Ares Design quotes 705 horsepower (715 PS) and a redline of 8,800 rpm, which is an interesting development over the bone-stock engine. Those revs probably indicate a flat-plane crankshaft, which means that the small-block V8 motor sounds pretty different too.
A further evolution of the design language of ARES, the S1 Project Spyder represents a new engineering challenge and...
Posted by ARES Design Modena on Wednesday, October 28, 2020
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