By TopGear Deputy Editor, Andrew Chesterton
As soon as my hands stopped shaking and I was able to remove the back of my head from between my shoulder blades, I started wondering how best to describe my brief but terrifying spell in the Spartan. This is the only thing I could come up with: take a giant tin of baked beans, empty out the contents, attach a supercharged Honda Jazz engine that now spits out 171kW. Now climb in and hold the hell on.My three quick laps at Eastern Creek were, without exaggeration, the most intimidating thing I’ve ever done for TopGear.
Sure, I’ve driven fast cars quite quickly before, albeit not very well, but they were mostly designed by experts in faraway laboratories. And since they were road cars, there was a whole heap of safety regulations they’d passed before I jumped in. The Spartan, on the other hand, was built in a Sydney shed by two brothers who had never, ever, built a car before. The only airbag was the small pocket of oxygen between my skull and my brain. If things went wrong, they’d go extremely wrong.
Also weighing heavily on my mind was the fact I was sitting in the only one in existence, and it was booked to appear the Eastern Creek this Saturday. And in the words of Peter Pap: “If you break it, we’re going to have do bad things to you.”
So, the specs. The car was born with a Ducati motorbike engine, but after much testing it was found to be as temperamental as just about every other Italian engine ever built, and so it was scrapped for something more reliable. Enter the 1.5-litre Honda Jazz powerplant, with added Sprintex supercharger goodness. Putting out 171kW, the 500kg Spartan now screams to 100km/h in 3.0secs. That’s fast.
Slide into the bare cockpit and you’re again reminded of that emptied can. There’s nothing in here but the steering wheel, the gear stick and three awesomely set-up pedals perfect for heel-and-toe throttle blips. And that’s it. Peter warned me about the Spartan wanting to put its rear end out on most corners. He seemed excited by it. I wasn’t.
The acceleration. It’s ridiculous. Literally throw-your-head-back stuff, made more obvious by the complete lack of a windshield. But this Spartan is also outrageous fun. By halfway through the first lap you completely forget its humble origins. It bites into turns, and grips as you power out like the jumbo go kart it is. And Peter’s right, the tail does loosen its grip at times, but only a little bit – just enough to be fun.
So I start squeezing on more and more throttle into bends, confidence turning into cockiness at an alarming rate. Then the back end lets go again. But not a little bit this time. The world spins. I cry. The car survives.
Visualising my impending death, I pull back into the pits and declare this is not to the car for me. If only we had a tame racing driver who could harness all this power. Wait a minute, we do. If only we could get him to Eastern Creek this Saturday at 11am. Wait a minute, we can.
And we have. And we hope to see you all there.