.......right now.
America now has its very own hypercar, only it’s not quite in production yet. At the recently concluded LA Motor Show, the California-based Aria Group uncovered the FXE, a car that looks to our eyes like a mashup of a Pontiac Firebird (front), 2017 Ford GT (profile), and Noble M600 (rear) or a bubble eye goldfish.
It’s a continuation of the ‘Fast Eddy’ concept that they brought to last year’s Los Angeles Motor Show, so named in honour of Ed Taylor, a former design president at General Motors and father to one of the Aria Group’s founders.
Should the company forge ahead and put it into what is increasingly likely to be quite a limited production run, the FXE is likely to be very fast indeed with a thumping 6.2-litre supercharged V8 sourced from Chevrolet mounted amidship and two electric motors to supplement the front wheels for a total output of 858kW and 1,784Nm.
It’s meant to be quite light too with nearly the entirety of the car being constructed from carbon fibre and other exotic materials to minimise weight, even utilising 3D printing to craft complex components. Aria claims it will wight around 1,550kg, which is damned impressive considering the typical weight penalty when battery cells are concerned.
While footage that the car photographed here that proves it actually runs instead of just being a show floor attention grab is tough to come by, Aria assures it knows enough about the prototype to say that it can accelerate from rest to 100km/h in about 3.1 seconds, with a top speed exceeding 350km/h.
Maybe that’s where Pirelli and those custom tyres come into play, sticky enough to shepherd all that power to the road effectively and not giving way at very high speeds. We do really like the F1-inspired sidewall decals and the custom forged HRE wheels do look tasty.
Before you dismiss the FXE as flash in the pan attempt to build an all-American hypercar from some well-funded but overly enthusiastic millennials, you should know they have quite a portfolio to back up their dreams of power and speed.
That portfolio includes building various concept cars for manufacturers such as Honda (FC Sport) and Kia (GT4 Stinger) as well as handling engineering and manufacturing duties for Singer Vehicle Design. Not bad.
