Mid-engined Corvettes, classic muscle cars, wild HEMI engines - these things are hugely popular right now. But do you know about a legendary hot rod that combines everything? It's the Chip Foose Hemisfear, and we thought it was the perfect way to celebrate #hemiday, which was yesterday.
The Hemisfear is, admittedly, a really old project. But it was never featured on autoevolution.com and, in fact, almost predates mainstream Internet. But for a pre-historic project, this one has some pretty modern details.
Like many of you hardcore car rendering artists, Foose studied it in school. More specifically, he attended the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. His graduation project was a Chrysler-sponsored concept the Hemisfear.
The car looked like your average hot rod drawing but featured all-aluminum construction and the most amazing mid-engined HEMI layout. Over a decade later, Chip was a world-famous designer when he received a contract from toymaker RC2 Corp to build a working prototype as a promotional vehicle.
From what we gather, five units were produced by Metalcrafters. They were sold to customers for $300,000 or more. However, from what we understand, the original was kept by Foose, and it's the green one you see here.
The body is mostly tubular or square steel. Foose liked to hide modern tech wherever possible, so the Hemisfear had fully independent suspension at all corners. You can see the rocker arm-actuated coilovers mounted behind the grille shell. The powertrain consists of a 392 Hemi mounted behind the driver, sending power to the wide rear wheels via a ZF five-speed transaxle.
We think that by 2005, when the project started, Chip had a number of billet aftermarket parts he could share between different products. You can see his trademark design in the steering wheel or the 5-spoke wheels.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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