Autocar Magazine - "Cropley's Tour of the British Sports Car Industry"

In the ninth instalment of this 11-part series, Steve Cropley visits Radical, whose cars are well… radical

RADICAL MOTORSPORT LTD
Unit 24, Ivatt Way Business Park,
Westwood, Peterborough PE3 7PG
Tel: 01733 331616
www.radicalmotorsport.com
Founded 1997; annual production 150
Number of employees 55
Current line-up: SR3 Tracksport, Supersport, Turbo; SR4 Clubsport, Lightweight

The most amazing thing about Radical - and there are quite a few to choose from - is just how far Britain's self-styled maker of extreme sports cars has come in little more than the blink of an eye. Just six years ago Radical was a Pembrokeshire-based manufacturer of sunbeds, and its extreme sports car concept was little more than a fag-packet sketch of a swoopy bike-engined racer, whipped up by the sunbed firm's inspired proprietor.

Now it's rather different. Radical is the name on the nose of 400 of the world's quickest sports cars, all manufactured in a modern Peterborough factory since 1997. One of those Radicals recently smashed the road-car lap record at the Nürburgring - with Autocar's own Phil Bennett at the wheel - and the mark it set remains at least 10 seconds better than any other contender. Aficionados seeking raw speed agree that a Radical is now the track-day weapon of choice, which is why production currently runs at around 150 cars a year, every one sold at the full price against a firm order. There are now two torrid, well-stocked Radical race series in the UK, each of which stages 26 races. In fact, it's hard to think of a more well-rounded tale of British pluck bringing success this side of the Rugby World Cup.

Radical is the brainchild of two race-obsessed businessmen, Mick Hyde and Phil Abbott, both keen competitors in 750 Motor Club events in the mid-'90s, who met after the annual general meeting in 1996 and formed a remarkably happy partnership on the basis of it. Hyde, who nowadays steers the company and is its spokesman (while Abbott keeps the factory and production percolating) had raced TVR Tuscans, then changed to a Caterham. Abbott had a slightly slower but very loud rotary-engined Mazda. They were sometimes in the same races, though their cars weren't well enough matched to compete wheel-to-wheel.

'Mick showed me this sports car he'd drawn, powered by a motorbike engine, that looked a bit like the Lotus Elise. We got talking about it in the car park, says Hyde. 'He was really keen on the idea, but I reckoned it was a non-starter - and I was right about that. The Lotus Elise had just been launched, and I knew we could never take Lotus on.

'A month later I spotted a very pretty racing car at Mallory Park, a Sports 2000 called a Robinson. It reminded me of Mick and his idea for a motorbike-engined sports car. It struck me that if the car could look that good, and was designed as a proper racing car - with its own series - it could really work. I'm a marketing man, after all, and this looked to me like a genuine gap in the market. But the racing series was vital if the thing was to be economic. Too many one-off cars have been invented by mad Englishmen who went broke doing it.'

The project got underway without delay. Both partners had been successful in business (Hyde in his own Manchester advertising agency and with an early internet firm; Abbott with a series of businesses including the tanning equipment concern) and were prepared to put money in, so there were no delays on that score. From the first, the Radical name was applied to the new car: it suited the extreme designs they wanted to build.

Hyde conversed with the 750 Motor Club about the Radical project and talked them into accepting his new cars in Sports 2000 races, a vital link in the chain. Then the pair started building a car. The plan was always for a pure bred racer that could be road-registered, not the other way around. Hyde felt that even the TVRs and Caterhams he'd been racing were 'modified road cars, really' and wanted the Radical to be a super-light-weight mid-engined design, as low as possible, with near-perfect weight distribution and handling, and an aerodynamic body. The 'bike engine rapidly became fundamental to the concept: as well as delivering 165bhp against a 10,500rpm red line, the Kawasaki ZZR1100 unit they chose came with an integral clutch and six-speed sequential 'box.

The plan was always for a tubular steel spaceframe chassis with adjustable, race-style double wishbone suspension at either end, using coil-over spring/damper units. That continues to be the Radical recipe. Lightness was and is the key: the first car weighed under 500kg, and subsequent Clubsport models have come in at 470kg complete - nearly 200kg less than an original Elise.

The first chassis was built by nearby Spyder Engineering, which had made frames for Mallocks and Lotus Elans, and where Abbott had previously worked. The car was then built by Abbott and Hyde (working day and night at weekends while keeping their weekday jobs going) for a proposed first race at Mallory Park in March 1997. 'We put in five consecutive 18-hour days,' says Hyde. But by the Friday we realised we weren't going to make it. So we took the chassis to the meeting anyway, and Marcus Pye gave us a nice write-up in Autosport.

'We intended to be like Caterham, getting everything made by suppliers and assembling it on site. That was Plan A, and it lasted until we started the second chassis. Then we realised we wanted more control, and started making everything ourselves. We've never changed back. Our designer, Nick Walford, is a self-taught engineer, but he designed the suspension pick-up points on that very first chassis, and we've never had to change them. Now he does everything.'

At Brands Hatch in April, with Hyde at the wheel, the first-ever Radical qualified sixth without ever having been on a circuit. 'I was third into the first bend,' Hyde recalls, 'but then I hit a car that braked early, and spun to the back of the field. I finished 11th, and we were very encouraged. Above all, I remember how the engine felt when I got back to the pits. It was idling so sweetly and evenly - after I'd given it death at 11,000rpm - that I started thinking it probably felt the same on a shopping trip. None of the engines I'd raced before had been like that.'

Working from a couple of little factory units owned by Abbott outside Peterborough, the partners started building cars in earnest. They called the first ones Clubsports. By August '97 they each had one to race at Pembrey, and at Silverstone the following spring there were eight or nine Radicals on the grid, in a field of Sports 2000s. 'People started saying: "You can't have expected to have been this successful, can you?" but I'd always been confident it would work. The niche was there and we filled it'

For 1998, the partners made an arrangement with the BRSCC to run a one-make series. Fields swelled beyond a dozen, with both Radical partners racing, as they still do. 'At Silverstone I was on pole,' Hyde recalls, 'and I couldn't settle all day because of the tension. I'd been an ad agency man. It suddenly struck me that whereas I was from a world of bull-shit, this was an arena in which you really had to perform.' He won the race, narrowly, and has won plenty more since.

Radical accelerated. The Clubsport spawned the Prosport, which introduced the massively powerful 1300cc Suzuki Hayabusa engine, plus a rear wing and proper race slicks developed for F3. At the end of '99 Tim Greaves, a Radical owner, bought a one-third share in the company 'for quite a lot of money' - on the strength of which Radical elected to build its parts levels to £1 million-worth, and launched a new car, the SR3. Both bigger and wider than the Clubsport, two big people could fit into it; the weight was up 50kg, but still just over 500kg. Radical's in-house engine builder, Powertec, extracts 205bhp from a standard-capacity Hayabusa, or 230 or 252bhp from special 1500cc stroked versions, so it hardly mattered.

Lately, Radical and Powertec have been building 1500cc turbos packing 320bhp, to test the durability of the transmission and the SR3's specially-built Quaife gear drive. The car was supposed to be experimental, but they finished up with 10 orders. 'It's a bit mental,' says Hyde. 'You have all the poke of a TVR Tuscan, with much more handling….'

The Radical partners positively refuse to sit on their now-ample laurels. They're about to launch the SR4: a back-to-basics new car, smaller than an SR3 and with chain drive to the back axle, but capable of accepting the 1500 Hayabusa. And just this week, Radical is announcing a venture with Quaife to produce an amazing V8 engine in 2.0- or 2.6-litre forms - using two Hayabusa cylinder blocks grafted to one crankcase and claimed to produce 350 to 400bhp. Prices start at £14,000 for the complete unit: engine, clutch, transmission. It weights just 125kg.

Next year, Radical will take its biggest step yet, and possibly its biggest risk. It has a £50,000 V8-powered 'driving machine' in the wings, slightly more of a road car than anything it has so far built, but still very much at home on the track. The prototype was covered by a sheet when we walked through the factory, but its squatness and compact dimensions were obvious. This car will be 'all about performance', and to be successful it has to beat Porsche GT3s, Ferrari 360 CSs, Tuscans and others in the frame. 'It doesn't even have a heater,' says Hyde proudly.

It's hard to keep up with Radical. You get the feeling they've hardly started. What's most impressive is the way this company achieves difficult, complex, expensive goals almost as a matter of course. It must have been a tough task to make cars at the top of this tiny niche market, but you can't get any flavour of the struggle from either of the well-organised company principals. They just seem to be having fun. However, they're clear about one thing: the company philosophy. 'We have successful products because they're the best in the market,' says Hyde, former marketing man. 'In the end, that's what people want to buy.'