Ginetta, the Leeds-based sports and race car constructor, will shock the supercar world this spring with the launch of a highly sophisticated, 200mph-plus supercar designed to catapult it into the high-performance road car arena currently occupied by Ferrari, Aston Martin and McLaren.
The company, owned by Le Mans GT2 class winner Lawrence Tomlinson and well known for launching and backing a successful ‘own brand’ UK sports car racing series, is likely to have its new supercar ready to make a ‘wild card’ entry at the Geneva motor show in March.
Tomlinson plans use the new Ginetta project to support his promising LMP1 Le Mans racing project, begun last year, and to showcase Ginetta’s substantial in-house technical capabilities. In recent years, the company has installed autoclaves and CNC machining capability and has greatly expanded its design facilities. It now does more original engineering than any other UK car company of its size.
The new supercar is likely to be ready for its first customers late this year. It will have an ultra-light carbonfibre tub chassis, plus carbon outer panels and a radical aerodynamic package designed entirely inside the company’s Garforth premises. Ginetta is still deciding the pricing, but the model is likely to be on a similar level to McLaren’s and Aston’s best-performing series models.
The new Ginetta’s showpiece is a bespoke, super-compact 6.0-litre normally aspirated V8 engine with its block machined entirely from aluminium billet. Drive is through a sequential paddle-shift gearbox designed in-house by Ginetta in partnership with a UK gearbox company.
Join the debate
Add your comment
Good luck to them with this,
Good luck to them with this, it sounds great (though I hope that V8 doesn't break them). I wonder how much cheaper it is to design, build and develop your own lump than it is to put in a breathed on LS. You can buy new crate LS's for £5-£7k. It's not heavy considering it's size, it can be made crazy powerful, it guarantees bulletproof reliability and just slots right in.
I understand the attraction of having a race-derived motor but it does come with certain risks.
For every customer put off by engine 'snobbery' I'll bet there would be a couple attracted by the reliability and ease of servicing.
Highly sophisticated?
Well I suppose that everything is relative! But on a more serious note, Ginetta seems to be doing everything that TVR isn't and with very little fanfare - and presumably making some money out of it.
Good luck to the company.
And they must be selling more cars than Lotus
Because the Ginetta race grids in the UK are larger than Lotus' UK road-car sales!
making some money out of it
Sadly the last accounts filed show Ginetta lost C£8m in 2018 and a similar amount in 2017.
Thats a big number on sales of c£9m
Ginetta....
can’t remember a Road Car let alone one road tested by the Mag or any Mag for that matter, so there Cars and this 200mph+ Car are unknown quantity other than the Race series that’s been going for a while.
Peter Cavellini wrote:
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/ginetta/g40
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/ginetta/g40/first-drives/ginetta-g40-r
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/ginetta/g60-2012-2015
Peter Cavellini wrote:
They've been building Road Cars since 1958