What the hell is that?: The RaceAbout 2005

Re-cap/Introduction


Okay, it's now been about three weeks down the road, matriculation-exams came and went and I still feel like writing! What started out as a humble prepping-exercise for the exams has now grown out of proportion..

And to inflate this thing even more, I think it's time to start another short-section! I've decided to incisively name this section "What the hell is that?" after the reaction these featured cars induce in the most of us. To clarify it further a bit: "What the hell is that?" covers not-so-usual cars built in not-so-usual places by not-so-usual people. A bit of a break from the mainstream car-news, aimed not so much at consumers but more at expanding our view on the car-world.

And what could be a better place to start this section than home?
And this is quite an obscurity to many. Amazingly, there actually is a completely Finnish-designed and built sports-car. You didn't know that, did you?





The RaceAbout 2005

Quite a looker, this little roadster...

The sim-racing nerds (me included) have seen this car in the "Live For Speed" driving-sim but I suspect only few know it's actually an existing car instead of just a lump of pixels on a computer-screen dreamt up by a sweaty geek in the LFS-design department.



This, The RaceAbout 2005, is the last generation in the line of the three original RaceAbouts built as a student-project at Metropolia Helsinki in co-operation with Valmet (the same factory that makes the goofy Fisker Karma and the russianly insane Marussia B2), and it's a real obscurity. Valmet has only managed to squeeze out a very limited number of cars, but it still presents a spark of hope for the dream of one day having an actual "real" car-maker here in Finland. But even more more pertinently it could be called an act of courage, a hero-story about a group of young unprejudiced car-engineers who just wanted to fulfill their boyhood dreams of one day making a sports-car, and overcame the odds.

..from the side, at least. From the front it looks like a robot-toad

The original idea for the project was to build a road-legal sports-car, uncompromised by mass-production requirements, a car focused on one thing only, idiotically good drivability. A proof that driving-experience can be retained even after overcoming the Finnish registration-bureaucracy.


The young lads who founded the project figured the magical equation was this: make a light mid-engined rear-wheel drive car with a decent amount of horses. Then make it look like an orange toad. Then make it road-legal. And so they did.

That single muffler in the middle is so sexy

Featured, as the name implies, at the Geneva Motor Show in 2005 the RaceAbout 2005 is the result of roughly 7 years of development. Underneath the very orange carbon-fibre shell lies a 1998cc turbocharged straight-four Saab-engine, which pumps out a relatively modest 268 horsepower considering this car calls itself "something special". But here's what makes that number count: It's immensely light! It only weights 795kg, so it's almost down there with the track-day roadsters, except it actually looks good, ahem, as long as you close your eyes when it turns towards you. Those numbers make for a power-to-weight ratio of a Ferrari F430 (2,96kp/hp), so not bad then! Especially when you keep in mind that it is completely engineered and designed by a bunch of mid-twenties students!

Too bad then, you can't actually have one without having to resort to illegal measures. I fear the closest you and I are ever going to get to driving this thing is in that small-time driving-sim, and I'm devastated because I really adore this one! But that said I don't actually feel nostalgic about the car. This, I think, should not be viewed as an end itself, but more as a means to an end. The first glimpse of greatness. The first milestone in the journey of a rising success-story. I think this little project is going to grow beyond it's proportions in the future(much like this blog, muhaha), all it needs is a bit of economical stimulation, along with the euro-zone... Just keep your eyes peeled!


For more tech-specs and info on the car visit http://www.raceabout.fi/ where you'll also find the in-development award-hording newest generation of the RaceAbout, the ERA.

And if you want to drive the RaceAbout (kind of, anyway) visit the Live For Speed website, the game is free you know!

-HS

Was this your first encounter with the RaceAbout? Thoughts about this section and comments on the car are all welcome!