Designer of $3.4 Million Lykan Supercar to Build $55,000 Retro Sports Car

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Posted by Zach Doell

                               

 

While the name of car designer Anthony Jannarelly might not ring a bell, If you’ve seen Furious 7, you’ll surely be familiar with his work. The young French designer sculpted the body of the talked-about-in-whispers W Motors Lykan HyperSport, which at $3.4 million a pop retails as the most expensive new car in the world.

 
But penning the most expensive car in the world must not have been enough, because now he’s back in the spotlight with his own eponymous car company and offering a wild design for modest money, the Jannarelly Design-1, which will start at just $55,000.

Inspired by the golden age of sports cars, the Design-1 roadster is said to incorporate 1960s styling with modern lightweight materials, and will be hand-built at a new workshop in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Need one? 30 limited production models will be built beginning next year, with production to scale up from there if demand increases.

So far, the project has been spearheaded by Jannarelly and business partner Frederic Juillot, both of whom own and have a passion for the lightweight Caterham and Donkervoort sports cars. However unlike the archetypal Caterham Seven, the Design-1 tucks its engine in the rear of the car, which is said to be a 300-horsepower Nissan 3.5-liter V6. A six-speed manual transmission will transfer power to the rear wheels.

Pull back the sultry carbon fiber body (also available in fiberglass) and you’ll find the Design-1 employs a chassis built from tubular steel and aluminum. Befitting its track car status it also fields a bevy of racing gear, from adjustable coil-over suspension to four-piston front brakes, and a limited slip differential. Unleashed, it’s expected to dash from zero to 60 mph in only four spends, and at full chat, it’ll do 135 mph.

If you like the sound of that—admittedly, who wouldn’t—the first customers are said to receive their cars in summer 2016. The company notes that it is in the process of finding distributors to sell the car in multiple world markets, including in the United Kingdom, for which the sports car meets the standard for low-volume manufacturers.

Road-legality in the U.S. could be trickier, but seeing as the Ariel Atom and Caterham Seven have safely made the swim across the Atlantic as component cars, not impossible.