Radical is back with an 850bhp track monster

Just a thought: has any automotive company’s name better reflected what it makes and how it thinks than Radical? 

You could argue Volkswagen did, back in the day, when they were actually cheap enough for the Volks. London Electric Vehicle Company is probably in with a shout, as is Land Rover. Whether Smart applies is perhaps in the eye of the beholder.

But it’s Radical that takes the cake for us: rather than the old Ferrari method of selling road cars to support its on-track endeavours, Radical made purpose-built track cars that looked like (and went like) bona fide race car refugees – and, crucially, sold them. This might not seem like much in 2022, when every man and his capital investment group has a track-only weapon of one calibre or another, but it was quite a thing back in 1997. And quite something else to have made a successful business out of it in the years since.

And yet here we are, looking at the first glimpse of what has to be Radical’s... well, most radical car. At the moment, Radical’s referring to it only by its ‘Project 25’ working title, which is a nice way to refer back to its quarter-century history in motorsports. As is the 25-car production run, in case you hadn’t got the point quite yet. We’ll just call it the 25 from now on, if it’s all the same. 

Apparently, the 25 has its roots in Radical’s RXC coupe, which no one would really accuse of being underdone – 654bhp in an 1130kg, closed-cockpit racer like the 600R does feel like enough in most cases. But as you might expect from a limited-run machine from a company that’s literally called Radical, the 25 does take things a rather... erm, major step further. 

So instead of a clearly weedy 654bhp twin-turbocharged 3.5-litre V6, the 25 will apparently be good for about 850bhp.

If this all seems a bit light on detail, then welcome to the concept of hype building. But, when it’s surrounding the build of a hyper car, we can probably let it slide. Er, the hype building, that is – not an 850bhp Radical. You’d probably want to try to catch that if it started to slide. Just a thought...