Nick Hall Freelance motoring journalist in the UK
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GTO
Arash Decision
Having been refused the chance to buy a Ferrari Enzo, most rich young men would simply turn to Porsche and ask for a place on the Carrera GT waiting list. That’s exactly what Arash Farboud did, but then in a fit of petulant rage he went and started his own company anyway, with the intention of building a car to blow a Ferrari off the road.
Farboud started in 1999 with a wild concept, a Porsche GT1 replica, and he freely admits that his company should have gone no further. It’s one thing building a shiny new prototype and lapping up attention at the shows, it’s quite another turning that dream into a reality and most fledgling manufacturers fall at the mass production hurdle.
But Arash didn’t fall away into the shadows, the 29-year-old set up a workshop opposite the family pharmaceutical company that pays for his impressive collection of exotica. Then, with the help of just two full time engineers, he gave painful birth to a supercar company.
Cost issues and manufacturing realities consigned the GT1 concept to the bin, and several evolutions down the line Farboud ended up with three working prototypes of the more refined GTS. The concept may have been tempered over the last five years, but it’s still anything but tame.
Moto GP ace Loris Capirossi has already put down his deposit, and he wants the more powerful prototype. It’s nice to know that even megastars are guided by their wives, though, as his better half looks set to demand a production car.
The Farboud is aggressive machine, but the design has a subtle elegance missing from its immediate competition from TVR and Noble. The GTS is a classically proportioned sportscar that looks right from every angle, except perhaps for that angular gouge from the side. It has spent serious time in the wind-tunnel to hone the basic shape and optimise the low-slung front splitter and diffuser, and the decision to leave a rear wing out of the mix is at least wise from a styling point of view.
On the prototype there is no sound insulation, my hand smashed against the dashboard when I selected first and there is no key, just toggle switches and a starter button. It’s six months and some major touches away from completion, but bringing this V6 monster to life banished all thoughts of panel gaps and loose plastic.
The prototypes are fitted with Audi’s 2.8-litre unit, bored out to 2.96 litres and fitted with twin turbos, together with new pistons and a variety of reinforced components. Dialynx, the British firm that originally assisted Spyker in its quest to extract ludicrous horsepower from Audi units, carried out the work on the V6 that now runs with 2.8 bar of boost. The results, predictably, are explosive.
A bridging relay kept the horsepower down to a mere 400bhp, but one of the red buttons on the steering wheel unlocked another 200bhp. Only one journalist has pressed it so far, and then only for a few seconds.
The 0-60mph time of 3.7 seconds felt more than conservative as this car tears off down the road with the slightest encouragement. There are no in-gear acceleration figures, but it stayed with a Carrera GT all the way to 140mph in a highly illegal road race before the Porsche driver saw sense and lifted. Farboud has dictated a 180mph top end speed, refusing the obvious opportunity to break the 200mph barrier, to make sure his creation is near untouchable when it comes to real world, mid-range punch.
Aside from the blistering speed, it’s the noise and violence that really marks the Farboud out as the turbo kicks in like a dragon snorting behind the snug racing seat. And when the boost kicks in mid-corner, this machine has the power to send the unwary driver spinning into the trees. I experienced first hand the potential danger when the Audi unit came on song at the apex of a hairpin. The back end was out in a second, but an armful of opposite lock and a lift of the right foot bought it back into line.
There is no LSD and no traction control, but the Farboud, does have a superbly rigid chassis that combines a spaceframe and welded panels to form a cut-price monocoque. The suspension includes Ohlins race dampers that, combined with a total weight of 2530lb full of fuel, provide race car like responses and the break at the rear is always progressive.
Of course this is an expensive set-up, and there are doubts whether the finished car will benefit from race bred dampers and suspension. But the engineers insist that the handling, which has taken a year, will follow faithfully in the footsteps of this mightily impressive prototype whatever components are fitted.
Braking comes courtesy of four-piston monobloc callipers clamping on to dinner platter size discs, but there was an undoubtedly wooden feel to the prototype’s braking. That’s something that will smooth out on the production line, but heavy braking in this car would scare an unskilled driver all the way to the local Porsche Boxster retailer.
It’s unashamedly savage, built for a man who tired of the soft edges on his supercar collection. Inevitably the finished production car will not be quite as ragged, but the interest, including a decent number of firm orders from people that haven’t even seen a production car yet, shows Farboud is on to something.
He has been forced to ditch the Audi powerplant, the heartbeat of the car, however, and has switched to the Mondeo-sourced Ford V6 for the production car for cost and availability reasons.
There will be a normally aspirated 3-litre, producing 270bhp, and a £56,000 twin-turbo model with a much healthier 355bhp and performance figures that shouldn’t suffer too much as a result of the switch.
And the engine change has at least one plus, bringing the price for the base model down to £48,000.
We’ll see the finished product soon enough, now that Arash has handed over control to Marcos founder Jem Marsh’s son Chris, but what is clear is that the Farboud is now a definite on the supercar horizon. And when the engineers finish the last prototype of the GTS, the two engineers on the Farboud premises will get to work on the GT1 replica, too, and Arash will use it for his own pleasure. At the moment, there is only one in the world, but that could change if Farboud continues on its current path.
When Ferrari turned him down for the Enzo, Farboud bought a 360 anyway, so they “won’t say no next time,” and his Carrera GT should have been delivered by now. But by the time the work has finished in Farboud’s garage in Cambridgeshire, he might not even want them.