Dallara Stradale revealed
Racing car maker unveils first road car: lightweight, 400bhp Ford- powered, and perfect for trackdays
WE LAST MET GIAN PAOLO Dallara 15 years ago. We’d travelled to Dallara’s Varano de’ Melegari factory just outside Parma to talk with him about his part in the development of the Lamborghini Miura ( evo 047): a fascinating tale, told by one of the nicest and most charming people I’ve met in the car world. His two heroes of engineering, he told us, were Alec Issigonis and Colin Chapman. ‘One day,’ he said, ‘I would like to make a modernday version of the Lotus Seven.’
That day has come. On his 81st birthday, Dallara was presented with the first production Dallara Stradale, the eponymous racing car manufacturer’s first ever road car. It’s a project the company has been working on for decades, though development has often stalled while it concentrated on work for outside clients, such as developing the Alfa Romeo 8C and producing the tub for the 4C.
The Stradale showcases Dallara’s expertise in composites and its skills in aerodynamics. At its heart is a carbonfibre tub, to which are attached front and rear subframes. At the back of the car there’s a transversally mounted 2.3-litre Ford Ecoboost turbocharged in-line four and a six-speed manual transmission. The engine produces a claimed 400bhp, considerably more than standard, thanks to reworked software and a new exhaust.
The car has no doors because, firstly, it saves weight, and secondly, it has allowed Dallara to run ducts through the bodywork that feed cold air – via interestingly shaped intakes on the front bodywork – to the engine’s air intake and intercooler. The engine itself is cooled by a front-mounted radiator. Dallara is proud of the Stradale’s dry weight of 855kg but even more chuffed with a maximum of up to 820kg of downforce, produced almost entirely by front and rear venturis and the otherwise perfectly flat floor, at the car’s claimed 170mph top speed.
Options include a rear wing, without which the downforce is slightly reduced; when it isn’t fitted, a small ‘reverse Gurney flap’ on the front venturi reduces front downforce to maintain the aerodynamic balance front to rear. That maximum figure also depends on having the optional adjustable suspension that allow the car to be dropped, at the press of a button in the cockpit, by 8mm.
If you’ve gone for the full aero effect, you might also want to order the oil pressure accumulator, which acts as a sort of emergency dry sump to maintain oil pressure under the Stradale’s extreme cornering forces, which can exceed 2G.
The price of the standard car is a whopping 155,000 euros plus taxes. Dallara also offers a windscreen (16,600 euros) to replace the standard aeroscreens, a targa-style frame roof (7700 euros) and a pair of top-hinged canopy doors (7300 euros) that turn the Stradale into a very attractive coupe that reminds me of my Corgi Dino 206 SP.
Low weight, simplicity and manual steering: the Lotus ingredients are all there. Trouble is, Lotus itself can supply a similar package for well under half the price. It won’t give you that amazing downforce but then, for many of us, fun on road and track is not about massive cornering forces. That said, four Stradales have already been delivered and production for 2018 is spoken for, with customers including Jean Alesi. The company plans to build only 600 examples, which, at ten chassis a month, will take five years.