IFR SUPERSPORT

First Impressions

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If you saw our coverage from the British International Motor Show earlier this year you'll know we got rather excited about the IFR Aspid. Excited enough to put it in our top 10 BIMS 'must see' cars, and ... you get the picture.
So having written lots of nice stuff about it in our show coverage and embarked on a sustained campaign of schmoozing and eyelash fluttering (it wasn't a pretty sight) IFR has relented and given us an exclusive early drive in the Aspid. We're not usually so blatant but every now and then it's worth it.

Why the fuss though? Well, it's not hard to see why the Aspid turned heads at ExCel. The open-wheeled styling, carbon fibre bodywork, detachable door hatches and insect-like front lights are all dramatic enough. But that's nothing when you hear about what this car can do.
Like go from 0-100-0mph in nine seconds. Even a Veyron is going to struggle to get anywhere near figures like that. 62mph comes up in a scarcely relevant 2.9 seconds and on the Catalan rally stage roads near IFR's factory the engineers reckon it's faster than a full-on WRC car.
Performance

The Aspid can be had in normally aspirated Sport or supercharged Supersport variants, both using the engine from the Honda S2000. Which, with its screaming 9,000rpm redline and race engine technology, suits the car well. We drove the Supersport, which has a staggering 402hp. In a car weighing 740kg - 200kg less than a Lotus Exige.
Driving through the standard Honda six-speed manual gearbox (it's one of the best there is so why bother changing it?) and sticky track-spec Toyo tyres it simply erupts down the road, the power delivery not unlike that of the aforementioned Exige, which also uses a high-revving, supercharged engine.

It's way faster though. You need to reconfigure your brain to get a handle on just what it's capable of and even then it's shockingly quick. And when you learn that the guys behind it are all ex-rally engineers it begins to make some sort of sense, especially on the twisty mountain roads on which it has been honed.
Veyron-baiting acceleration times are something of a red herring too. Because although the Aspid takes off like it's been fired off the front of an aircraft carrier its performance envelope only really extends up to around 130mph. Supercars will eventually outdrag the Aspid on an autobahn. But on a twisting mountain road nothing is going to get anywhere near it.