This is 'Fast Eddy': a 650bhp, V8 mid-engined supercar

One of the most interesting cars at the LA Auto Show last November wasn’t at the show at all – it was hiding in a small, off-site studio a few downtown streets away from the main event. Known simply as 'Fast Eddy', this superbly proportioned and crafted machine – a visual greatest hits compilation guest starring cues from the Corvette, McLarens and possibly even a little Ferrari, too – is the creation of Aria Group, a normally super secretive SoCal builder of concept cars, trucks and military hardware. Oh, and they also build the carbon fibre bodies for the Porsche 911 reimagined by Singer, so they know a thing or two about building quality supercars.

Notionally this car was created to celebrate the firm’s 21st birthday. A big cake would have been a lot cheaper. But it wouldn’t have satisfied the secondary purpose of the model, to see if people would buy a production version of Aria’s own vision of the perfect supercar. To find out more about the project, we went behind the scenes at Aria HQ to speak with Aria boss, Clive Hawkins and lead designer Nicholas David – both Brits – to see where this project came from – and who or what exactly is 'Fast Eddy'...

Clive Hawkins: Through engineering and manufacturing specialist road cars, we wanted to capitalise on that knowledge and add design services, too. So we can offer a one-stop shop which can do everything from design, engineering and manufacturing right the way through to a finished product. It’s very rare for one company to be able to do that.

CH: Exactly. This is our first roll out of a vehicle that has been completely designed in-house to showcase our design skills, as well as to showcase that we are looking to put this in production. We’re hoping to get about 20 orders to pull that trigger.

CH: We have the knowledge now from doing the Porsche 911 reimagined by Singer, in terms of the quality, and we’ve managed to get the limited run production process really, really tight. Therefore we know what we can be achieved.  We also did the painting in-house, the engineering in-house. We are very much looking forward to seeing if we can push this forward.

CH: Nicholas David. He went to the Royal College of Art and has worked for a lot of the OEM companies both in the UK as well as in the US. [He has worked on Jags including the XKRS and CX-75; Land Rovers including the DC-100 Defender replacement. And Chevy where he worked on the 140-S millennial mobile, among others.] He has been a friend of Aria’s for the past 11 years, latterly through his work designing concepts at the Honda Advanced Design studio in Pasadena.

Nicholas David: Clive and I sat down and thought how can we celebrate what Aria’s been doing for the past 21 years, and how can we provide a vision of what we are going to do going forward. The father of our one of our co-owners, Charles Taylor, was one of the world design bosses for GM during the golden period of design. He designed 20 production cars, including the Corvette C4. His name was Eddy Taylor and his nickname was Fast Eddy. So, we thought, why don’t we do a homage to him and his time at General Motors?

ND: No, we have taken cues of some of the great cars of the past, such as the C4, but this is not our vision of what a mid-engined Corvette should be. It’s its own thing. We have used some of the shapes and forms of the original Corvettes, but it has a very unique face and shape. From a surfacing point of view, we didn’t want it to be as hard and angular as a Lamborghini or as round and full as a McLaren. It’s a nice balance in-between. It’s not so cab-forward or aggressive as the European mid-engined supercars. The cab is more central, giving the car a longer silhouette. Plus all the lights are secondary in terms of your second and third read of the car. You see the form first and then you only see the lights when they are turned on. Otherwise they are kind of secondary, hidden away among the form.

ND: No, the entire structure of the car – the chassis, the bodywork, glass, switchgear – everything will be ours. Obviously we will buy in certain suspension and other drivetrain components, like the clutch, which would be too expensive to develop in house. But it’s very important to us that this is its own thing.

ND: This car was done much earlier, way before the Zora [codename for the mid-engined ‘Vette] images broke cover. But, if we put this car into production, the launch timing could be similar. However, this car is far more extreme, in terms of design and performance. Our company president did approach GM prior to us going ahead with this, informing them of what we are doing, so they are well aware.

ND: At the moment we’re basing the design on having a Chevy LT4 engine [the 650bhp/650lbft 6.2-litre V8 plumbed into the Corvette Z06 and Camaro ZL1] and the car weighing just under 2,900lb, so it’s incredibly light [a Corvette Z06 is 3,550lb].

ND: It hasn’t been decided.  It depends on how many we are going to make. If we have the 20 that we want to pull the trigger, then it’ll have a certain price point. If we do just a couple of one-offs, the price will obviously be more. But it’s fair to say from the cost of a Singer [these start around $500k] and up. We don’t want to position it as an alternative to the Ford GT, or Lamborghini Aventador as we feel this car is something far more unique. Think about it more as an American Bugatti – with true customisation and a real focus on quality and craftsmanship.