In summer 2014 we brought you news of the Sin R2, a dubiously named but highly focused performance car from a brand-new manufacturer calling itself Sin Cars.
More details have since emerged to shed a little more light on the car, which has undergone a minor name change to become known as the Sin R1.
The Sin R1: what is it?
Scheduled to go on sale in early 2015, the Sin R1 will be available as both a racing car (eligible for various GT championships around the world) and a road car. While previously the race version was to be known as the R1 and the road car the R2, both will now share the R1 moniker.
Don’t expect the road car to be particularly luxurious. Like the race car, you’ll have to squeeze through an FIA-approved roll cage to reach the driver’s seat and customers can choose between either fibreglass or carbonfibre body panels to clad the R1’s tubular spaceframe chassis.
Power comes from General Motors’ off-the-shelf LS3 V8 engine (the same as that used in the Camaro SS) with upwards of 420bhp. The race car uses the 7.0-litre LS7 engine from the same family, developing around 610bhp.
Top speed is expected to be 186mph with 0-62mph dispatched in 3.5 seconds and 0-124mph in 9.7 seconds – so it’ll at least be pretty brisk.
Despite appearances, Individual Vehicle Assessment (IVA) testing by VOSA ensures the R1 will be considered a low-volume production car rather than a kit car concoction on Q plates.
Sin Cars – what is the company all about?
It’s the brainchild of company owner and occasional racing driver Rosen Daskalov, who became frustrated with cars he’d owned and raced before and decided to try and do it better. A sort of Bulgarian-based Ferrucio Lamborghini then, only with designs on a niche racing car rather than a Ferrari-rivalling GT.
The Sin R1 is being developed in conjunction with Daventry-based firm Proformance, a distributor of raw materials for the motorsport industry and now essentially the UK arm of Sin cars. Prototype production has been based in Bulgaria but the finished car will be manufactured in Germany.
So far in 2014 the prototype R1 race car has been racking up miles in the GT Cup racing series in Daskalov’s hands, while a handful of road cars have been built as test mules and demonstrators.
One such car ran at the 2014 Goodwood Festival of Speed, unfortunately grabbing headlines for the wrong reasons after an unscheduled hay bale interfacing incident.
How much is the Sin R1?
A turn-key road car with the LS3 engine will be priced from around £145,000. There’s no limit on production planned, as the R1 will be very much a car built to order with a sliding scale of pricing depending on what the customer has in mind.
The interior can be made more plush (relatively speaking) or more spartan – and driver aids including traction control will be available although, like a few other hairy low-volume cars, ABS won’t.
Production is flexible (or small) enough for customers to choose their own engine if the V8 isn’t to their liking or they have a specific championship in mind to compete in.
Of course, low-volume sports car projects along these lines come and go all the time, but Sin hopes the R1 could find its way into the garages of a few wealthy track-day enthusiasts and gentleman racing drivers.
A flop in the waiting or a track-hungry machine with real promise? Discuss in our comments section below.
Click here for our earlier Sin R1 story.