Spotted in the Wild: Ultima GTR
A friend of Drive Cult spots a true unicorn.
First of all, I can't really take credit for spotting this one. My friend Jocelyn Duke (if you're in the market for some art, you can check out her work at jocelynduke.com) had the presence of mind to snap a few photos of this Ultima GTR and text them to me. She described it as beautiful, but I had to disagree.
To me, Ultimas have always looked like they were cobbled together by a guy with a lot of mechanical gusto, a large garage and surplus of fiberglass. In many cases this was more or less the truth, since the chassis, body panels, engine, etc. can all be purchased piecemeal from Ultima. It might just be me, but the badging looks like it was knicked from the Mercedes letter bin.
But these British-built, American-powered beasts aren't about earning points at the country club. They're about going fast - really stinking fast. The spaceframe chassis and 6.3 liter V8 may be a bit old tech, but like all good sports cars, the Ultima was constructed with a ruthless approach to saving weight.
It only weighs 2182 lb / 990 kg and while the Chevy lump might be archaic by modern engine standards, it still cranks out a reliable 534 hp and 523 ft-lbs of torque. That's a pretty astonishing power-to-weight ratio, but Ultima also produces twin-turbo version with 720 hp that's capable of hitting 60 in 2.6 seconds. That's quicker than pretty much anything else on the road barring a Bugatti Veyron or Caparo T1. In fact, a tweaked, albeit non-street legal version of the GTR posted a quicker time than the Caparo and the Ferrari FXX around the Top Gear test track.
You don't see many Ultimas parked up in your average condo garage, so thanks to Jocelyn to bringing this to our attention.
