Danny Bahar’s open-topped Ares S1 supercar now has a windscreen

Ferrari, McLaren and Aston Martin have all released windscreen-free speedsters in the past few years – we even gathered them all together for a chilly trip to the Scottish Highlands – but clearly these breezy limited-run specials aren’t that easy to sell if you haven’t got years of pedigree and an F1 connection to lean on.

We know that now because Dany Bahar’s Ares S1 Project Spyder (yep, the one we first saw back in October 2020) has now turned into the thing you see above.

Confusingly, this C8 Corvette-based creation is now called the S1 Speedster, but that’s speedster in the 991-gen Porsche 911 sense. Bahar’s changes from the 2020 car include the addition of a wraparound windscreen and a less aggressive front end with new LED lights.

Looks a little easier to put into production, doesn’t it? Bahar assures us that 24 examples of the carbon-bodied S1 Speedster will definitely be built and delivered to customers. "Since the presentation of the S1 Spyder, we saw that there was great interest in an open version of the S1 Project, but that many enthusiasts would prefer a design that combines the excitement of driving an open car with enhanced comfort,” he said.

“S1 Speedster was created to meet exactly this demand, while also introducing many improvements to the design that we will also see on the coupe version of S1 Project.”

Ah yes, the coupe. The Speedster shares its mechanicals with that car – which means a mid-mounted 6.2-litre naturally-aspirated V8 making 705bhp and 715lb ft of torque thanks to some tweaking to the work of Chevrolet’s engineers. It’s still rear-wheel drive too, so should be quite the handful.

Ares says that the Speedster also introduces some updates to the interior, with a new three-screen setup and new seats.