Vemac RD200
Jul 18, 2009 | 07:15 PM
#1
Thread Starter
| FIGJAM
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 9,463
Vemac RD200
Vemac RD200 | Car Review | evo
Remember the Vemac, the Honda-engined sports car developed by Chris and Luke Craft of Rocket fame and featured way back in evo 044? Well, it’s been on sale in Japan for some time, and it’s now also available in the UK. So, should you consider it?
The original Vemac was powered by the old Japanese domestic market Integra Type-R’s 1.8-litre four placed longitudinally with a bespoke gearbox. These days it’s powered by the JDM Civic Type-R’s 2-litre ‘K20’ unit, sitting transversely in the car, allowing the Civic’s superb six-speed to be retained, but at the cost of raising the car’s centre of gravity a fraction. That should hardly be noticeable, but the power hike from the old 180 to 220PS (217bhp) certainly should be.
To find out for sure, we drove a new RD200 30 miles south-west of Tokyo to the Toyo Tyres Turnpike. The road starts at sea level, just a few hundred metres in from the beach, but climbs rapidly to 1000m through a series of high-speed curves and long hairpins over eight and a half miles. As a benchmark, we also took along a Lotus Exige S, which is nigh on the same size and weight (around 900kg), and knocks out an almost identical 218bhp.
The Vemac’s carbon and Connolly leather seats feel even lower than the Exige’s and the gearlever is on the driver’s right, mounted on the leather-clad door sill. Standard equipment includes electric windows and air-con strong enough to cope with Japan’s 40C, 90 percent humidity summers, and enough leg- and headroom to accommodate anyone up to 6ft 4in comfortably.
The V-TEC motor positioned directly behind the driver’s head makes plenty of noise, but it’s a far more pleasing roar than the supercharger-dominated Lotus. Although, as World War II fighter pilots will attest, that supercharger makes all the difference at altitude, where the Exige demonstrated a distinct power advantage. Everywhere else, though, the Lotus felt almost tame in comparison to the Vemac, which should give some clue as to how truly hardcore a machine the RD200 is.
Keeping the V-TEC in its 6000rpm-plus sweet-zone is easy thanks to that slick type-R box, and acceleration through the gears is as smooth as it is rapid. You can easily find yourself bouncing off the 9000rpm rev-limiter. Vemac doesn’t have an official 0-60 time for the RD200, and our chosen course wasn’t flat enough to find one fairly, but suffice to say that it could keep up with the Exige S (0-60 in the low 4s) on the straights below the cloud-line, if not above it.
Through the high-speed bends, the Vemac felt better planted. Where the Exige’s tyres began to lose grip and the front would start to wash wide, the Vemac just hunkered down and ripped round the corner, displaying an incredibly neutral balance. Steering is light, transmitting every ripple and dip in the road through the wheel, which is a good thing at speed on well-kept roads, though it can lead to tramlining on well-worn highways. The suspension features fully adjustable Showa dampers.
In essence, the Exige S is an unusually rapid road car that’s suitable for days at the track. The Vemac however is a race-bred track car that can be used every day.
So how much does one cost? 8,673,000 Yen is the not-so-simple answer, which works out to £37,300. Luke and Chris Craft can arrange to supply one to a UK customer, including SVA approval, for around £45,000 (call 0208 5015578 for more details or visit vemaccars.com).
Engine:In-line 4-cyl, 1998cc, dohc V-TEC
Max power:217bhp @ 8000rpm
Max torque:152lb ft @ 7000rpm
0 - 60mph:4.5sec (est)
Top Speed:150mph (est)
On sale:Now
Remember the Vemac, the Honda-engined sports car developed by Chris and Luke Craft of Rocket fame and featured way back in evo 044? Well, it’s been on sale in Japan for some time, and it’s now also available in the UK. So, should you consider it?
The original Vemac was powered by the old Japanese domestic market Integra Type-R’s 1.8-litre four placed longitudinally with a bespoke gearbox. These days it’s powered by the JDM Civic Type-R’s 2-litre ‘K20’ unit, sitting transversely in the car, allowing the Civic’s superb six-speed to be retained, but at the cost of raising the car’s centre of gravity a fraction. That should hardly be noticeable, but the power hike from the old 180 to 220PS (217bhp) certainly should be.
To find out for sure, we drove a new RD200 30 miles south-west of Tokyo to the Toyo Tyres Turnpike. The road starts at sea level, just a few hundred metres in from the beach, but climbs rapidly to 1000m through a series of high-speed curves and long hairpins over eight and a half miles. As a benchmark, we also took along a Lotus Exige S, which is nigh on the same size and weight (around 900kg), and knocks out an almost identical 218bhp.
The Vemac’s carbon and Connolly leather seats feel even lower than the Exige’s and the gearlever is on the driver’s right, mounted on the leather-clad door sill. Standard equipment includes electric windows and air-con strong enough to cope with Japan’s 40C, 90 percent humidity summers, and enough leg- and headroom to accommodate anyone up to 6ft 4in comfortably.
The V-TEC motor positioned directly behind the driver’s head makes plenty of noise, but it’s a far more pleasing roar than the supercharger-dominated Lotus. Although, as World War II fighter pilots will attest, that supercharger makes all the difference at altitude, where the Exige demonstrated a distinct power advantage. Everywhere else, though, the Lotus felt almost tame in comparison to the Vemac, which should give some clue as to how truly hardcore a machine the RD200 is.
Keeping the V-TEC in its 6000rpm-plus sweet-zone is easy thanks to that slick type-R box, and acceleration through the gears is as smooth as it is rapid. You can easily find yourself bouncing off the 9000rpm rev-limiter. Vemac doesn’t have an official 0-60 time for the RD200, and our chosen course wasn’t flat enough to find one fairly, but suffice to say that it could keep up with the Exige S (0-60 in the low 4s) on the straights below the cloud-line, if not above it.
Through the high-speed bends, the Vemac felt better planted. Where the Exige’s tyres began to lose grip and the front would start to wash wide, the Vemac just hunkered down and ripped round the corner, displaying an incredibly neutral balance. Steering is light, transmitting every ripple and dip in the road through the wheel, which is a good thing at speed on well-kept roads, though it can lead to tramlining on well-worn highways. The suspension features fully adjustable Showa dampers.
In essence, the Exige S is an unusually rapid road car that’s suitable for days at the track. The Vemac however is a race-bred track car that can be used every day.
So how much does one cost? 8,673,000 Yen is the not-so-simple answer, which works out to £37,300. Luke and Chris Craft can arrange to supply one to a UK customer, including SVA approval, for around £45,000 (call 0208 5015578 for more details or visit vemaccars.com).
Engine:In-line 4-cyl, 1998cc, dohc V-TEC
Max power:217bhp @ 8000rpm
Max torque:152lb ft @ 7000rpm
0 - 60mph:4.5sec (est)
Top Speed:150mph (est)
On sale:Now
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Jul 18, 2009 | 08:09 PM
#3
Thread Starter
| FIGJAM
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 9,463
another article regarding the rd200:
Burning Rubber
Two lightweight sports cars go head-to-head before the first round
of the Formula Nippon race series
The Formula Nippon championship isn’t just Japan’s premier racing series and a final stepping stone to Formula One; it’s an arena where the world’s most prolific car maker, Toyota, goes toe-to-toe with the world’s greatest engine builder, Honda.
Since the Toyota Supra and Honda NSX ceased production, neither of the behemoths have seemed willing to duke it out off the track. But ahead of the first round of the Formula Nippon next week at Fuji Speedway, two far smaller sports car builders have taken up the challenge. On the world renowned mountain passes around Hakone, we asked a Formula Nippon Champion to put two classic British sports cars, one powered by Honda, the other by Toyota, through their paces in a lightweight title fight.
There are two ways to make a car go faster. The obvious route is for manufacturers to fit in ever more powerful engines—an edict that has led to flagship sports cars from the main Japanese and European automakers, as well as the American Big Three, having 600 horsepower or more.
One sports car maker, however, has since its inception over 50 years ago steadfastly refused to join this power race. The design philosophy at Lotus was set by the company’s founder, legendary Formula One design pioneer Colin Chapman: “Simplify, then add lightness.”
Reducing weight not only makes the car move quicker, it also improves handling, braking and fuel economy, with no detriment to collision safety provided the body is designed well and built with appropriate materials.
That said, a bit of power is always welcome, and the Lotus we selected for our lightweight prizefight is one of the most powerful road cars the company has ever produced. The Exige S, weighing in at just 900kg, is powered by the same 2.0-liter Toyota engine commonly found in Corollas, but this one has been boosted up to 218 horsepower by the addition of a supercharger.
In the blue corner we have a Vemac RD200, which weighs 890kg and is home to a 2.0-liter motor that, thanks to astonishing Honda engineering wizardry, requires no turbo or supercharging to knock out a nigh-on identical 217 horses worth of power.
Never heard of Vemac? No surprise there. The brand is a subsidiary of Tokyo R&D, a local consulting firm that, among other things, builds concept vehicles for the big Japanese car manufacturers and carbon-fiber composite parts for rockets. Chairman Masao Ono has a CV remarkably similar to that of Lotus’ Chapman: a former Formula One and Le Mans racecar designer who started his own company to help cutting-edge technologies get into everyday road cars. No wonder the Exige and Vemac are so similar in design.
But which is best? Ordinarily I’d take the two cars to a mountain road, thrash them up and down for a while, then proclaim my verdict. But with these two thoroughbreds, I was, frankly, concerned that my driving skills wouldn’t be sufficient. So I enlisted the help of 2006 Super GT Champion and former F1 test driver Andre Lotterer (see next page) and headed to not just any road, but to Japanese motor journalists’ favorite mountain pass: the Hakone Turnpike.
Recently renamed the Toyo Tires Turnpike, this toll road starts a few hundred meters in from the beach in Odawara, then climbs through innumerable turns and hairpins to just over 1,000m above sea level—all in just 14 kilometers. Unlike Germany’s Nüburgring, which is also classed as a public toll-road, the Turnpike has a posted speed limit of 50km/h. We stuck to this at all times. Obviously.
Pulling away from the toll gate, it became clear that the cars were a match in terms of straight line acceleration, but at altitude the Lotus demonstrated a distinct power advantage. As World War II fighter pilots will attest, superchargers help ram what oxygen there is above the cloud line into the cylinders, improving combustion.
Through the bends, both cars demon-strated phenomenal levels of grip, but whereas I was able to take the Lotus to its limits, I couldn’t go around corners quickly enough to get the Vemac to drift. Lotterer had no such qualms, and declared the RD200 to have the better handling.
After a few more runs, the professional race car driver advised Ono—who had come along for the day and didn’t seem to mind how we were treating his baby—that a bit more down force at the rear wouldn’t go amiss, and a wing on that long rear deck would probably look cool too.
As the day progressed, it was clear that Lotterer had a clear favorite. “The Vemac is a real racing car,” he exclaimed, quite enthusiastically for a Toyota racing driver. “I can drive it like my GT car.” He particularly liked the driving position and the relative height of the pedals, which made for easy heel-and-toe work.
I felt less at home in the RD200. I didn’t have enough time to get accustomed to the shift lever being on my right-in a right hand drive car. I just could not get over my preconception that the gear shift should be in the middle of the car, not mounted on the doorsill.
I did prefer the throaty growl of the Honda engine over the whine of the Lotus’ supercharger-dominated Toyota, which to me sounded more like a Dyson vacuum cleaner than a racing machine. But the Vemac’s bucket seat, made of carbon fiber and Connolly leather, was just too low (millimeters above the floor) for comfort.
At the end of the day, the fundamental difference between the two vehicles became easy to define. The Exige S is an unusually rapid road car, suitable for days at the track. The Vemac, however, is a race-bred track car that can also be used as a daily driver.
Lotterer made his choice early on, and he stuck by his decision. I, however, was torn. With both cars costing between ¥8-¥9 million, I couldn’t even use economics to aid my decision. I preferred the looks of the Exige, but knew in my heart that the Vemac was the better car. I could comfortably drive the Lotus fast from the get-go, but I would have to learn to truly appreciate the RD200. Finally, I had to agree with the opinion of Pierre-Laurent Ribault, a French journalist who had come along for the day. He too would buy the Lotus… but then regret it.
Meet Andre Lotterer, star driver for Toyota
Andre Lotterer has it good. Eight weekends a year, he is paid to race Formula Nippon cars at circuits across Japan, and on another nine Sundays, he pilots a Lexus Super GT car around the same tracks.
Apart from a few test sessions at Suzuka and Fuji Speedway and an occasional team launch, that’s about it—leaving the 26-year-old free to hit the gym five days a week and enjoy life in Tokyo with his girlfriend, one of the Peach John models (Japan’s answer to Victoria’s Secret). So what do you have to do to live this life?
Get obscenely rich quickly is one route. A few million dollars can buy you a race seat at a competitive team, where after a few years of practice you may be able to keep up with the competition. Your only other choice is to get into karting about the time you learn to ride a bicycle. That’s what Andre did at age 7, at the bidding of his father, who used to race cars in Germany (where he was born) and Belgium (where he grew up). Andre did his dad proud, and within a couple of years was winning junior karting championships. That’s when sponsors started to appear, willing to gamble that his talent would pay dividends many years down the road.
Sure enough, at the age of 19, after winning back-to-back championships in the BMW ADAC Formula Junior Cup and then the full BMW ADAC Formula series, Andre entered German Formula 3. He did well enough to secure a seat for 2001 in British Formula 3—the established feeder series to Formula 1—along with a testing role at Jaguar’s F1 team. At the end of 2002, however, a regime change at Jaguar left no room for him, and his managers began looking for opportunities outside of Britain.
Following a single appearance in an American Champ race, Andre got a call from Japanese racing legend Satoru Nakajima. Would he be interested in coming to Japan for a test drive? The test must have gone well because the first thing Nakajima asked Andre as he climbed out of the Formula Nippon car was, “How long will it take you to ship your stuff to Japan?”
Lotterer on the track at Suzuka during the Super GT test
©Toshikazu Moriyama
After three years with Team PIAA Nakajima, Andre sensed a change in the balance of power within Japanese motorsports and gambled on jumping ship from the Honda-backed outfit to Toyota Team Tom’s. The gamble paid off when he won the Formula Nippon Championship and was rewarded by Toyota with test drives in their Formula 1 car. He still holds out hope that there will be a further role for him in the F1 program.
For now he’s happy with life here in Japan, and who can blame him? We caught up with Andre at an official Formula Nippon test at Fuji Speedway on March 9, where he set the fastest time of the day, boding well for this year’s championship.
You can go watch him begin his campaign on April 6 at Fuji Speedway. Tickets cost ¥5,000 in advance for the entire race weekend from Friday to Sunday, including two F3 races as well as the main Formula Nippon on Sunday.
The drivers will return to Fuji over the Golden Weekend from May 2-5 with the fastest enclosed (i.e. cars with roofs) racers in the world for round three of the Super GT championship.
There is no public transportation to the circuit from the nearest station, JR Gotenba,
so to avoid the ¥5,000 taxi fare we recommend either hitching a ride with a friend or renting
a car for the weekend—but beware of 30km of traffic on the drive back to the Big Mikan, particularly following the Super GT race. —JG
Burning Rubber
Two lightweight sports cars go head-to-head before the first round
of the Formula Nippon race series
The Formula Nippon championship isn’t just Japan’s premier racing series and a final stepping stone to Formula One; it’s an arena where the world’s most prolific car maker, Toyota, goes toe-to-toe with the world’s greatest engine builder, Honda.
Since the Toyota Supra and Honda NSX ceased production, neither of the behemoths have seemed willing to duke it out off the track. But ahead of the first round of the Formula Nippon next week at Fuji Speedway, two far smaller sports car builders have taken up the challenge. On the world renowned mountain passes around Hakone, we asked a Formula Nippon Champion to put two classic British sports cars, one powered by Honda, the other by Toyota, through their paces in a lightweight title fight.
There are two ways to make a car go faster. The obvious route is for manufacturers to fit in ever more powerful engines—an edict that has led to flagship sports cars from the main Japanese and European automakers, as well as the American Big Three, having 600 horsepower or more.
One sports car maker, however, has since its inception over 50 years ago steadfastly refused to join this power race. The design philosophy at Lotus was set by the company’s founder, legendary Formula One design pioneer Colin Chapman: “Simplify, then add lightness.”
Reducing weight not only makes the car move quicker, it also improves handling, braking and fuel economy, with no detriment to collision safety provided the body is designed well and built with appropriate materials.
That said, a bit of power is always welcome, and the Lotus we selected for our lightweight prizefight is one of the most powerful road cars the company has ever produced. The Exige S, weighing in at just 900kg, is powered by the same 2.0-liter Toyota engine commonly found in Corollas, but this one has been boosted up to 218 horsepower by the addition of a supercharger.
In the blue corner we have a Vemac RD200, which weighs 890kg and is home to a 2.0-liter motor that, thanks to astonishing Honda engineering wizardry, requires no turbo or supercharging to knock out a nigh-on identical 217 horses worth of power.
Never heard of Vemac? No surprise there. The brand is a subsidiary of Tokyo R&D, a local consulting firm that, among other things, builds concept vehicles for the big Japanese car manufacturers and carbon-fiber composite parts for rockets. Chairman Masao Ono has a CV remarkably similar to that of Lotus’ Chapman: a former Formula One and Le Mans racecar designer who started his own company to help cutting-edge technologies get into everyday road cars. No wonder the Exige and Vemac are so similar in design.
But which is best? Ordinarily I’d take the two cars to a mountain road, thrash them up and down for a while, then proclaim my verdict. But with these two thoroughbreds, I was, frankly, concerned that my driving skills wouldn’t be sufficient. So I enlisted the help of 2006 Super GT Champion and former F1 test driver Andre Lotterer (see next page) and headed to not just any road, but to Japanese motor journalists’ favorite mountain pass: the Hakone Turnpike.
Recently renamed the Toyo Tires Turnpike, this toll road starts a few hundred meters in from the beach in Odawara, then climbs through innumerable turns and hairpins to just over 1,000m above sea level—all in just 14 kilometers. Unlike Germany’s Nüburgring, which is also classed as a public toll-road, the Turnpike has a posted speed limit of 50km/h. We stuck to this at all times. Obviously.
Pulling away from the toll gate, it became clear that the cars were a match in terms of straight line acceleration, but at altitude the Lotus demonstrated a distinct power advantage. As World War II fighter pilots will attest, superchargers help ram what oxygen there is above the cloud line into the cylinders, improving combustion.
Through the bends, both cars demon-strated phenomenal levels of grip, but whereas I was able to take the Lotus to its limits, I couldn’t go around corners quickly enough to get the Vemac to drift. Lotterer had no such qualms, and declared the RD200 to have the better handling.
After a few more runs, the professional race car driver advised Ono—who had come along for the day and didn’t seem to mind how we were treating his baby—that a bit more down force at the rear wouldn’t go amiss, and a wing on that long rear deck would probably look cool too.
As the day progressed, it was clear that Lotterer had a clear favorite. “The Vemac is a real racing car,” he exclaimed, quite enthusiastically for a Toyota racing driver. “I can drive it like my GT car.” He particularly liked the driving position and the relative height of the pedals, which made for easy heel-and-toe work.
I felt less at home in the RD200. I didn’t have enough time to get accustomed to the shift lever being on my right-in a right hand drive car. I just could not get over my preconception that the gear shift should be in the middle of the car, not mounted on the doorsill.
I did prefer the throaty growl of the Honda engine over the whine of the Lotus’ supercharger-dominated Toyota, which to me sounded more like a Dyson vacuum cleaner than a racing machine. But the Vemac’s bucket seat, made of carbon fiber and Connolly leather, was just too low (millimeters above the floor) for comfort.
At the end of the day, the fundamental difference between the two vehicles became easy to define. The Exige S is an unusually rapid road car, suitable for days at the track. The Vemac, however, is a race-bred track car that can also be used as a daily driver.
Lotterer made his choice early on, and he stuck by his decision. I, however, was torn. With both cars costing between ¥8-¥9 million, I couldn’t even use economics to aid my decision. I preferred the looks of the Exige, but knew in my heart that the Vemac was the better car. I could comfortably drive the Lotus fast from the get-go, but I would have to learn to truly appreciate the RD200. Finally, I had to agree with the opinion of Pierre-Laurent Ribault, a French journalist who had come along for the day. He too would buy the Lotus… but then regret it.
Meet Andre Lotterer, star driver for Toyota
Andre Lotterer has it good. Eight weekends a year, he is paid to race Formula Nippon cars at circuits across Japan, and on another nine Sundays, he pilots a Lexus Super GT car around the same tracks.
Apart from a few test sessions at Suzuka and Fuji Speedway and an occasional team launch, that’s about it—leaving the 26-year-old free to hit the gym five days a week and enjoy life in Tokyo with his girlfriend, one of the Peach John models (Japan’s answer to Victoria’s Secret). So what do you have to do to live this life?
Get obscenely rich quickly is one route. A few million dollars can buy you a race seat at a competitive team, where after a few years of practice you may be able to keep up with the competition. Your only other choice is to get into karting about the time you learn to ride a bicycle. That’s what Andre did at age 7, at the bidding of his father, who used to race cars in Germany (where he was born) and Belgium (where he grew up). Andre did his dad proud, and within a couple of years was winning junior karting championships. That’s when sponsors started to appear, willing to gamble that his talent would pay dividends many years down the road.
Sure enough, at the age of 19, after winning back-to-back championships in the BMW ADAC Formula Junior Cup and then the full BMW ADAC Formula series, Andre entered German Formula 3. He did well enough to secure a seat for 2001 in British Formula 3—the established feeder series to Formula 1—along with a testing role at Jaguar’s F1 team. At the end of 2002, however, a regime change at Jaguar left no room for him, and his managers began looking for opportunities outside of Britain.
Following a single appearance in an American Champ race, Andre got a call from Japanese racing legend Satoru Nakajima. Would he be interested in coming to Japan for a test drive? The test must have gone well because the first thing Nakajima asked Andre as he climbed out of the Formula Nippon car was, “How long will it take you to ship your stuff to Japan?”
Lotterer on the track at Suzuka during the Super GT test
©Toshikazu Moriyama
After three years with Team PIAA Nakajima, Andre sensed a change in the balance of power within Japanese motorsports and gambled on jumping ship from the Honda-backed outfit to Toyota Team Tom’s. The gamble paid off when he won the Formula Nippon Championship and was rewarded by Toyota with test drives in their Formula 1 car. He still holds out hope that there will be a further role for him in the F1 program.
For now he’s happy with life here in Japan, and who can blame him? We caught up with Andre at an official Formula Nippon test at Fuji Speedway on March 9, where he set the fastest time of the day, boding well for this year’s championship.
You can go watch him begin his campaign on April 6 at Fuji Speedway. Tickets cost ¥5,000 in advance for the entire race weekend from Friday to Sunday, including two F3 races as well as the main Formula Nippon on Sunday.
The drivers will return to Fuji over the Golden Weekend from May 2-5 with the fastest enclosed (i.e. cars with roofs) racers in the world for round three of the Super GT championship.
There is no public transportation to the circuit from the nearest station, JR Gotenba,
so to avoid the ¥5,000 taxi fare we recommend either hitching a ride with a friend or renting
a car for the weekend—but beware of 30km of traffic on the drive back to the Big Mikan, particularly following the Super GT race. —JG
Jul 19, 2009 | 09:06 PM
#4
Teamspeed Pro
Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 31,976
From: Minnesota
Looks like it'd be a fun little car to drive. That's cool how they mounted the shifter on the right side but I'd imagine it'd make it a pain in the ass to get in and out of the car. It's also pretty pricey, even compared to the Lotus equivalent.
Jul 19, 2009 | 09:25 PM
#5
Thread Starter
| FIGJAM
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 9,463
this is a bespoke car, only 20 have been made so far. the lotus is quite a bit softer. this car takes the purist ethos almost to it's zenith. minimal weight, mid engined, rwd, 9K rev limit...a superb combination of ingredients imo.
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