Thank you.
The Beyond 2000 supercar video proudly sponsored by Ampol, Australia's own.
Hello and welcome to this special edition of Beyond 2000 supercars.
Reports that have provided us with some of our most exciting experiences.
Reports that feature the fastest, most exhilarating and best handling motorcars possible.
Sometimes impractical, often dangerous in the wrong hands, they nevertheless generate universal excitement and a desire to own them.
And they do serve a practical purpose.
History has proven that the technology in these supercars of today does work its way through into the mass production models of tomorrow.
So settle back, tighten your seatbelts as we show you the supercars of Beyond 2000.
Just the mere mention of the name Modena is enough to excite any true sports car fan.
But this small Italian town is the home of some of the finest machines ever built.
Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, they're all built in or around the town.
But times have been tough for the independents lately.
They've been gobbled up by the big boys.
Fiat owns Ferrari, Chrysler owns Lamborghini.
And now Modena has a new supercar that may prove to be the most amazing of them all.
This is the Cezetta V16T.
Yes, that's right, V16.
And it's the newest and biggest sports car to take to the unofficial test tracks of northern Italy.
Everything about this car is unique.
The music you can hear was especially written for it by the Oscar award winning composer, Giorgio Moroder.
Moroder is in fact one of the backers of the car's production.
And it's not surprising to find him on the company's nameplate in recognition of his financial support.
For ten years this has been one man's dream.
The former Lamborghini test and development engineer, Claudio Zampoli.
I skipped a lot of days of school just hanging on the track here in Modena when the Ferrari and Maserati were testing cars.
And I just grew up with that image and started to work as an apprentice and get involved with cars.
I get the smell of the gasoline like my doctor says.
He believes that the F in my blood is gasoline.
Apart from Zampoli himself, the body design was created by the great Marcello Gandini,
designer of the first Lamborghini Countach, not to mention the Mura, the Aspada and the Arako.
But while the outer design really is impressive, the most exciting aspect is its mighty 16-cylinder engine.
Any way you look at it, it's massive grunt.
There's 64 valves, eight overhead cans and all that power delivered through the centre of the engine.
There are two counter-rotating crankshafts, one on the left and one on the right.
They're geared into a single shaft and a transaxle that delivers the power to the rear wheels.
This unique T design leaves plenty of room for the brakes and some suspension that would be quite at home on a race car.
But otherwise it's more or less conventional.
There's no four-wheel drive and no turbos.
It's all part of the Zampoli philosophy of having a car that spends its life on the road, not in the workshop.
The dimensions of the car are quite staggering.
It's more than two metres or 80 inches wide, four and a half metres long, 175 inches, and it weighs around 1.7 tonnes.
Unlike many of its Italian cousins, it has excellent all-round vision, an extremely good turning circle and it handles beautifully.
It's remarkably stable on the road.
Now, I'm not irresponsible, but with 540 brake horsepower sitting behind your head, there is a slight temptation to see what this beast will do.
For the record only, 0-100km an hour comes up in about four seconds and you're still in first gear.
The old-fashioned ton, 100 miles an hour, comes up in about 12 seconds.
An old as sweet sound.
How fast do you think it'll go?
I can't say it. I think it will go pretty fast, but I don't know yet.
200 plus?
I like that there, that 200 plus.
Of course, that's 200 miles per hour or about 320 kilometres per hour.
It would probably be impossible to build this car anywhere else in the world.
Nowhere are there so many small specialist companies like Engine Block Foundries and Leather Trimmers that could give the painstaking attention it takes to hand-build this type of sports car.
All of the car will be individually tooled and assembled in this small factory.
Little wonder that Zampolli plans to build only 50 a year.
And to do that, Zampolli has gathered together some of the finest engineers Modena has to offer.
Many of them from around the corner at Lamborghini.
Even the cat, Chitia, has found its way from the workshops of Lamborghini to join the team at Chisetta Moroder.
On this, its first day out, the Chisetta certainly created a great deal of interest with the locals.
Naturally, some didn't have the mechanical knowledge to be able to fully understand the complexities of a V16, while others, including those from Ferrari, took more than a passing interest.
It's often the passengers in the car, so I came to give a look directly to the car.
Is this your first look at it?
Yes.
What do you think?
Really, really, to the real car, the magazine I've seen, I've already seen the car.
What do you think?
Not bad.
Well, here in Ferrari it must be good.
I mean, if you say not bad, then it's quite a compliment.
It's a compliment, yes.
Most of us will never get the opportunity to own one of these magnificent cars, but like Claudio Zampolli, we can always dream.
It's arguable that no individual has made a greater impression on the world of high-performance motoring than the late Enzo Ferrari.
The F40 here was designed as his last personal hurrah, the greatest ever road-going Ferrari, a commemoration of 40 years of superlative design, engineering and manufacture.
This is the fastest production car in the world, the Ferrari F40.
Even while the prototypes were being tested at Ferrari's track, the factory was besieged with orders from hopeful customers.
They knew that this car would be a classic.
Only 900 will be built, and only loyal and long-standing customers will be able to buy them.
It's a car that Enzo Ferrari promised would be better than the world's other supercar, the Porsche 959.
Porsche threw down the supercar gauntlet with the 959 a few years ago.
It's fast, expensive and sophisticated.
Under this conservative skin is the latest thinking in automotive engineering.
Electronic four-wheel drive, highly developed anti-lock brake systems and electronically adjustable suspension.
All very functional and very safe, but also very complex.
Ferrari's answer is as Italian as the Porsche is German.
Ferrari built the world's fastest car with one simple premise in mind.
Put together a very powerful engine and use it to propel a light, strong car.
No frills, no compromises.
It's easy to decry car makers for entering into a competition like this.
It's a game of one-upmanship that has very little to do with the average car buyer.
But even the most ardent pedestrian will feel some stirring of pleasure as the F40 thunders by.
The body is made of carbon fibre and Kevlar, a modern wonder material that's also used to clothe Ferrari's Formula One cars.
The first impression is just how flimsy it all seems.
This entire nose section is very light indeed.
The strength of the car though comes from down here, the chassis, which forms a rigid cage around the cabin
and helps absorb the immense loads that the car can generate.
Back here behind the driver's head is the stable for 478 horsepower.
It looks quite something, doesn't it?
To put that in some sort of perspective, that's the equivalent of 10 Toyota Corolla engines
in a car that weighs approximately 100 kilograms less than a Toyota Corolla.
To squeeze that sort of performance out of a relatively modest 2936cc V8 requires some sophisticated engineering.
This engine boasts four camshafts and 32 valves, electronic fuel injection and twin water-cooled turbochargers.
Ferrari claims this engine will accelerate the F40 to 200 kilometres an hour in 12 seconds.
With a top speed of 325 kilometres an hour or 201 miles an hour and a cornering ability to match, this is a car you strap on.
The no-frills approach continues through into the cockpit.
This could easily be a race car.
It's got that slightly unfinished feel. There's no carpets and no plush leather seats,
just these moulded racing versions which hug in all the right places.
The dashboard is equally serious. No distractions, just essential information.
No cigarette lighter, no glove box and of course no stereo system.
Enzo Ferrari wanted this car to sum up 40 years of racing Ferraris.
He saw it as another Ferrari racing car that could be driven on the roads.
Evolutionary but not revolutionary.
Its body shape is undeniably modern with all the required slots and slats,
but it still owes a lot to the great Le Mans winners of the 1950s and 60s.
Enzo Ferrari died in August 1988. This is his last car.
Some people are saying it will be the last real Ferrari, that without him
the factory will be forced to turn over a new page.
For anyone who loves cars, the reaction to this one is going to be emotional.
In a world of practical, sensible cars, this is hopelessly impractical.
It's a driver's car. Details that are incidental to that are, well, incidental.
Take opening the door, for example.
Standard fitting on this $700,000 car is this piece of cord here.
You pull on it and the door opens. Oh well, who cares?
Opening the door means that your journey's over.
And that's really the last thing on your mind. Ciao.
The Koa3 by Isuzu is a four-wheel drive, all-terrain sports car with a ceramic engine under the bonnet.
The Koa3 is a working prototype, a long-range prediction for sports driving in the future.
Its designers claim that ceramics have a much longer working life than conventional steel and alloy.
The Koa3 is a snug two-seater, supervised by onboard computers that adjust the car's components,
depending on such things as the weather and the terrain you're driving across.
From the famous drawing boards of Italdesign comes the Machimoto.
It's powered by a 16-valve Volkswagen Golf engine and designed by Giorgio Gigiaro himself, the co-founder of Italdesign.
Included in his list of successes is the Incas, a sports tourer in the grand style.
It's like a high-performance living room.
The aircraft-style control system is designed for a generation that have grown up with video games.
Even the gear change is on the steering wheel.
There's every chance that a version of this car will go into production, but first they'll have to solve one problem.
There's so much glass, the car almost melts in the sun.
On road, or in this case on racetrack, Mitsubishi claims quite remarkable speeds from the HSR.
According to the makers, the readout is in kilometres per hour.
That makes this machine something akin to pocket dynamite.
The two-litre turbocharged HSR boasts, among other things, air brakes,
which help you come back to earth after such exhilarating speeds.
It has four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering, anti-lock front and rear brakes, active suspension,
and a host computer control system which all the drives the car for you.
The HSR is an ongoing study vehicle for Mitsubishi's Galant and Mirage models.
This is the Monster, a 350-horsepower four-wheel drive muscle machine, designed exclusively for 28-year-old Thomas Gere.
With its Mercedes engine, Boeing 727 wheels, and a cost of $240,000,
it's just the thing for paring around his parents' 150-hectare property near Frankfurt.
This is definitely not your all-purpose motor vehicle.
Practicality wasn't high on the list of design criteria.
It's noisy, there are no doors, it chews through the petrol,
and to top it off, you can't drive it on the roads because it can't be registered.
What's more important to Thomas is that it's fast, it's powerful.
There's only one in the world, and it's fun.
And if you think that's an extraordinary car, you ain't seen nothing yet.
It's only one of the creations from a small car factory at Gransen,
on the banks of the Nuenberger River in Switzerland.
The gifted designer behind it, Franco Sparrow, has become an inspiration to car manufacturers all around the world.
Sparrow is a classic scholar who studied motor mechanics in his spare time,
and in a career that's taken him from head mechanic for the Geneva racing team
to designer of cars for the rich and famous, his philosophy has remained unaltered.
To create the consummate car, you have to be an expert in all areas,
from aerodynamics and style to the mechanics.
In the motor world, Sparrow is in the unique position of being able to choose the majority of his clients,
and he turns down many requests.
He says his customers must like cars, have money, and be a little crazy.
Like his drawings, Sparrow's designs are direct, efficient, and simple.
Take the Robour, for instance.
It looks pretty conventional from the front, but there's quite a surprise in store.
So, you think the famous Mr. Sparrow has messed up a park.
Not so. Thanks to one of his more ingenious innovations,
all he has to do is point the nose into the parking space, and the car takes care of the rest.
Watch this. Franco.
This champion of traffic congestion has two extra wheels that raise the rear of the body
and slide it neatly into place, which has to be only 10% bigger than the length of the car itself.
That's my kind of car.
Sparrow could easily have become a large-scale manufacturer,
but his designs don't have the universal appeal needed for volume production.
Instead, he releases only about 30 handmade cars a year.
His tiny factory employs just 12 men, all carefully chosen for their precision and expertise.
Attention to detail is paramount, and some very practical ideas have found their way into the cars.
But the Sparrow name is synonymous the world over with style,
and the only tie with tradition he expresses is through the creation of the neocyclic cars born in his workshop.
The greatest demand is for the late 30s BMW 328 replica.
Built in fiberglass, it won't rust, is very tough, and looks a million dollars.
Major car manufacturers have long been intrigued by Sparrow's highly original prototypes,
and such is his reputation that Citroën approached him to design one for them.
They wanted fresh ideas, and they gave him his head.
The result was the adventure, and some interesting design features for sporty types.
There's room for luggage in the door, and a special compartment for golf clubs or fishing rods.
Seats for the kids in the back fold down to give a larger interior space,
and on the side, steps up to a leather fold-up seat, an ideal vantage point for the football.
But the latest and most famous Sparrow car of all is the Challenge.
Sleek, aerodynamic, and powerful.
It comes with a choice of two engines, a Porsche 911 turbo six-cylinder with 300 horsepower,
or a Mercedes bi-turbo eight-cylinder with 350 horsepower, combined with a four-wheel drive.
It looks out of this world in the Swiss countryside and provokes curiosity, fascination, and envy everywhere it goes.
The very shape of the Challenge suggests speed, though the aerodynamic line can be broken by
hydraulically controlled wind spoilers for stability at high speed.
Even the doors are unconventional.
As you'd expect, the interior is the height of luxury.
The finish is all wood and leather, there's state-of-the-art music machines, even cameras and television monitors,
though not for the uses you'd expect.
Gone are the days of rear-view mirrors.
In their place, a camera mounted on the back of the car, which will zoom in or out,
providing the rear-view image on monitors set either side.
Technically brilliant, with superb styling and finish, it really is the stuff dreams are made of.
And although most people will never be able to afford one of these models,
we could well benefit from Sparrow's genius in the future,
because there's no doubt that some of these ideas will find their way into production cars within the next 10 years.
And possibly one of the most revolutionary ideas to come from Sparrow is this new approach to the wheel.
Although this first example of the hubless wheel is designed for motorcycles,
it could be easily adapted for high-performance cars.
The idea behind the hubless wheel is really very simple.
In a conventional wheel, all the forces are channeled through a tiny bearing in the centre.
What Sparrow has done is eliminate the axle
and enlarge the bearing till its outer rim becomes integral with the wheel.
Sparrow has taken out a total of eight patents on this new wheel design,
but despite his understandable enthusiasm, industry-wide acceptance of the idea remains to be seen.
Every year car manufacturers bombard the unsuspecting consumer
with a selection of new cars from their design and engineering teams.
It seems the toughest assignment is coming up with the right name.
What's left after Pulsar, Magna, Metro, Telstar, Supra, Camry, Accord, etc., etc.
But if the car is coming from the elite Daimler-Benz stable,
then people, let's say those with the little spending money, tend to expect more than a fancy name.
The last new sports car Mercedes launched was back in 1971.
Two decades would seem a long time to wait for a successor,
but the latest generation SL, codenamed the R129, should match the anticipation.
Tradition and innovation are the keywords the company uses for its new baby.
The look and lines of the vehicle are unmistakably Mercedes.
However, the technological and engineering features incorporated in its production
this car in a class all its own.
Seven years and about $500 million went into the research and development of the new SL.
Mercedes is looking to recapture the spotlight in the prestige car market,
surrendered in recent years to the likes of BMW.
The new SL is far beyond of the average car in all respect.
And so it's a kind of a star which comes into the market.
And even average people who cannot afford a new SL will talk about it.
Active and passive safety are the areas given highest priority in the production of the vehicle.
The SL features acceleration skid control,
which improves the road holding capability by increasing traction under certain conditions.
The automatic locking differential prevents wheel spin when there is little or no grip on the road surface.
Mercedes has also taken the development of car seats in a new direction.
The frame is made from pressure die cast magnesium, increasing the rigidity of the seat
and improving its load bearing capacity in an accident.
To further enhance occupant safety, the seats are electrically adjustable with the seat belt interconnected with the headrest.
This makes for an optimum belt position no matter how tall you are.
The optional soft top convertible really gives you the chance to impress your friends.
On a day such as this one when there's no need for a roof overhead,
well that old push of a button cliché wins out again.
With the new SL there's no need to concern yourself with such petty and tiresome details as folding down the roof.
An electro-hydraulic system in the car does the job for you in about 30 seconds.
Perhaps the outstanding safety feature of this car is the extendable rollover bar.
Now while I activated it myself that time, it's also triggered automatically.
Sensors measure the acceleration, suspension and the angle of the body in relation to the road.
If they detect a potentially critical situation, the bar snaps into place in less than half a second.
The microprocessor control unit will activate the bar only once a hazardous situation has been unmistakably established.
A catch is released and the spring components are instantly disengaged from the hydraulic system.
The graphic slow motion sequence demonstrates the structural integrity of the passenger compartment.
Airbags for the driver and front seat passenger are optional.
Once again a sensor determines the severity of the accident.
The bags are inflated if a predetermined threshold is exceeded.
Indeed an SL buyer is faced with a wide range of options.
The SL is available in three models of which this is the top of the range, 5.0 V8, developing about 330 horsepower.
One of the optional extras Mercedes has for this car is an adaptive damping system,
which constantly adjusts the suspension of the vehicle according to the road conditions.
And as you can see right now, they're pretty rough.
But even in these sorts of conditions, this car is a joy to drive.
Mercedes claims the new SL has bridged the gap that existed between sporty handling and a comfortable ride.
In tandem with the damping system is a level adjustment control,
which lowers the body of the car at high speed to reduce drag or raises it for driving over obstacles.
The SL is another step down the road to intelligent cars.
Most of all sensors and computer devices will help us to exclude the driver as a very weak member of the chain and to correct his errors.
With the new car the company has launched three new engines
with refined emission control systems and automatic camshaft adjustment to increase the torque.
The choice is from a 3.0-litre 6-cylinder two-valve engine, the same engine with four valves, or the 5.0-litre four-valve V8.
From the deserts of Death Valley to the snow-laden Austrian Alps,
the R129 was thrashed and bashed across six million kilometres of road and terrain before meeting the required production standards.
The result is a car that packs the Mercedes-Benz pedigree into every twist and turn.
As one might expect, there are all the extra little creature comforts that represent the icing on a mouth-watering cake.
About 20,000 a year will roll off the Bremen assembly line, and yes, the word is well and truly out, so get in early.
Simon, your time is up now. We need the car.
Well, Jürgen, I'd really love to, mate, but you've got to catch me first.
We just need...
Countdown
Recent Tokyo Motor Shows have been a revelation for the international car industry.
The Japanese have shown some of the most sophisticated machinery ever put on wheels.
Now we all know the Japanese build good, small and mid-sized cars, but what shocked was their
willingness to take on the Europeans and Americans at the very top end of the market.
The exotic supercars which represent the very peak of auto design and technology.
The Europeans had been expecting this attack on their supercar supremacy and have new generation
machinery hitting the tarmac.
Cars like the new Mercedes Sports should hold off the Japanese onslaught for a while at least.
All of which leaves the home of mass motoring, America, looking rather forlorn.
It's been years since Uncle Sam has produced a car that could be truly counted as a world leader.
But this car might be the beginning of a renaissance of the great American sports car.
It's the 1990 Chevrolet Corvette by General Motors and it's been designed to take on and beat the very best.
This is the machine that has amazed the cynics who wondered if America had become irrelevant in automotive technology.
Although it hides under the existing Corvette body shell, there's nothing like the ZR1 anywhere in the world.
It's a calculated multi-million dollar gamble to put General Motors back on the map.
What we really tried to do here was give our customers something that they could enjoy and would be right at the boundary
of what they could go out and buy as credible performance machines. I think we've done that.
This is a car with some remarkable performance figures and innovative features which we'll look at.
But perhaps most important of all, it has something the Japanese don't have yet.
Like all thoroughbreds, it's a car with impeccable breeding.
The Vette has been the carriage for GM's top engine ever since it was launched in 1953.
Today the early models are considered classics of their kind, but progressively over the years,
they became weighed down by old-fashioned engineering.
In recent times they've been hobbled by lousy handling and gelded by catalytic converters.
The old nag had just about run out of steam.
It had obviously become time for some fresh blood.
GM's Chevrolet division decided the only way to meet the European and Japanese challenge
was to try and beat them at their own game.
And that required an all new car with the latest in technology.
In order to stand out from the crowd, you have to do things that are just absolutely exceptional,
whether you're Japanese or European or American.
That's what I really think we've done, is demonstrated a car that just stands out clearly from the expected norms.
The obvious place for GM to find the exceptional was at its newly acquired British auxilary, Lotus.
Already a maker of first class sports machines, Lotus had the experience in suspension and engine technology
that GM needed to meet its aim of creating the fastest and best handling American road car ever.
The result of that collaboration is that General Motors has finally been dragged into the latter part of the 20th century.
Gone is the old cast iron clunker and in its place is this, a multi-valve aluminium V8
with four cams delivering nearly 400 old-fashioned brake horsepower.
Yet this is a remarkably sophisticated piece of machinery, not an old grunt machine like the old Corvettes.
It's as smooth when you're tootling around town as it is when you're screaming around the highways.
Inside the car is an electronics display that would shame a fighter plane.
Features like a warning light for low tyre pressure and variable ride control in readiness for the coming of the Lotus fully active suspension.
All that technology allows some interesting possibilities like this for instance, it's called the valet switch.
It means that by simply turning the key you can lock out about half the engine's power.
Just great for when you lend the car to the kids.
But without doubt the real stunner is the amazing six-speed transmission, something nobody else has.
In fact to be honest I've never had it in sixth gear but I have experienced the CAGS.
It's not Chris Adel Guinness, rather it stands for computer aided gear shift.
It means that when you're tootling along the car will automatically decide to shift you from first into fourth.
The idea is to save on gas and in fact this car returns a very respectable 22.7 miles per gallon which is fantastic for a supercar.
Which brings us to the important stuff, performance.
Shod with monstrous 35 aspect tyres that can pull more than a G round bends, it's quite simply awe inspiring.
The upper range is somewhere around a good old fashioned 180 miles per hour, well over 250 kilometres.
Special versions called sledgehammers have been timed at a staggering 254 miles per hour.
Yet the anti-lock brakes and great handling means that performance motoring is possible even for under performing drivers.
It's a remarkably forgiving machine and it should be reliable.
The drive train can take repeated beatings.
In European magazine tests the Corvette was pitted against the only other cars in its class.
The highly exotic Porsche 959 and the remarkably rare Ferrari F40.
But I've left the best till last.
Perhaps the most remarkable achievement of all is the cost of the ZR1.
At around $50,000 each you could buy a fleet of them for the price of that Ferrari.
From the outside these two Lotus XL's look pretty much the same.
The grey car is fitted with conventional passive suspension.
The red car however is fitted with Lotus's latest innovation, active suspension.
The red car still keeps its tyres in contact with the road.
The grey car doesn't corner so steadily.
The roll gets worse and finally it loses control altogether.
With cameras mounted on the body of the car notice how the suspension moves up and down.
The body of the car hardly moves at all.
The main thing you can see here is the hydraulic system which consists of a hydraulic tank
which feeds oil to a crankshaft driven hydraulic pump mounted under the induction system.
So that's not really visible.
And that feeds high pressure oil to the hydraulic manifold here
which distributes it to the four actuators mounted in the wheel arches.
The actuators are controlled by servo valves which are under the control of the computer in the back of the car.
And the instructions to the valves are based on the information gained from transducers mounted on the actuators.
The only thing that tells you that this isn't a standard Lotus XL is the display on the dashboard.
The computer is in the boot.
It's receiving information from transducers on the underside of the car telling it about the road surface.
The servo valves meanwhile are deciding whether the fluid passes from the top or the bottom of the actuator piston.
In effect this car has synthetic springs.
The computer continues to feed information about each hub's load and displacement,
each wheel's forward velocity, the acceleration of the body, the squat, the drive and the roll and the car's forward speed.
Apart from that the Lotus engineers won't tell you anything about how it works.
It's a well established fact that the strength of Kevlar is becoming increasingly important in automotive design.
But if one company has its way, conventional plastics will become the next innovation in car construction.
This is the test lab for GE Plastics at their European headquarters in the Netherlands.
As we know, the bumpers on the majority of current model cars are made from plastic.
They're far less prone to damage than those made from metal.
Now take a body panel for a car made from thermoplastic.
Its resistance to repeated hammering at a force of about 30 kilometres an hour is extraordinary.
By comparison the metal panel is a near write-off.
Although there are still many hurdles to overcome, such as stress loading through the chassis, the answers are well within reach.
Competition for the contracts worth billions of dollars to suppliers will be intense.
To prove a point, GE Plastics have poured over two million dollars into this development vehicle, the Vector Car.
A sort of exercise in proving a point.
Although it's a fairly standard workman-like vehicle in design, its implications for the future are endless.
There's a proliferation of mass produced four-wheel drive sports sedans available today.
But it's important to look back at the Audi Quattro Super Sports.
In all-terrain vehicles where four-wheel drive can be engaged when desired, the handling is wonderful in the rough.
But because there is a rigid coupling between the front and rear axles, problems show up once the vehicles are driven on bitumen.
The rigid coupling allows no compensation for the different distances each wheel actually travels when the car goes around a corner.
The Quattro's answer to this is a centre differential between the front and rear axles to make the power transfer more flexible.
The differential is via a combined shaft which is actually integrated within the gearbox.
The systems save space and weight over other systems.
It's interesting to note the cost of developing technology like this.
The Audi Super Quattro was a vehicle that cost around three hundred thousand dollars to build,
but were being discounted to two hundred thousand dollars so that Audi could sell the 150 cars that it needed to qualify for that year's rally circuit.
At that price you'd think owners would be only partially interested in the money saved on tyres.
But better traction on all four wheels means they don't have to be as wide,
which has an added benefit in that the car is less likely to aquaplane in the wet.
Many drivers have dreamt about the possibility of being able to change the tuning of their car to suit different driving conditions.
Well now EFI Technology, the same company responsible for programmable fuel injection in the Holden Racing Team cars,
have come up with a similar system for the family sedan.
By using an EPROM in the fuel injection computer, that's an electronically erasable programmable read-only memory,
a host computer can be hooked up to the engine and all the management information is then displayed on the laptop computer's screen.
Sensors record information like engine revs, manifold pressure, inlet air temperature, coolant temperature and throttle position.
Fuel delivery code is also displayed and it's here that changes can be programmed.
You can program any number of discs like these with different settings,
and with the laptop computer you can literally change the performance characteristics of the car at the roadside.
It's a bit more difficult than putting air in the tyres, but then for those of us who know what we're doing, it's a snack.
When a manufacturer like Porsche sets out to produce a benchmark automobile,
you can expect nothing less than the highest levels of innovative design, engineering and lateral thinking.
Porsche named that supercar the 959.
Its technology is now being transferred into mass production models like this Carrera 4.
Yet, four years since its release, the 959 still waits to be surpassed.
It's more like low-level flight than driving a car.
The Porsche 911 competing in the grueling 1984 Paris Dakar rally.
But this was not all 911.
Beneath its skin, the beginnings of a new car, the Porsche 959.
Only 200 of the 400 horsepower twin turbocharged car will ever be built,
just enough to meet international regulations for Group B motor racing competition.
And when they are put together, they'll look like this.
Well, we're a long way from the Paris Dakar rally here, but this car has emerged out of that rally,
a prototype of the Porsche 959, which embodies many of the features that Porsche has been developing for the last several generations.
It's the car Porsche plans will take them into the 21st century.
And in terms of high technology, it's jammed full of it.
So let's go and take a ride in the car of the 21st century.
The 959 is in every sense an engineer's car, though in appearance it has the future stamped all over it.
Its enormous power plant, its four-wheel drive, its ground-hugging capacity,
and its electronics packages are, Porsche admits, more than the average motorist wants or needs.
But here in the Porsche Laboratories is living proof that engineers still believe the car has a long way to go before its evolution is complete.
According to Porsche's head of research, Helmut Bott, who conceived the 959,
this car will embody and test every possible state-of-the-art automotive technology,
which will eventually be transferred to other Porsche vehicles like the 911, the 944, and the 928.
The brief for the 959 was simple.
High performance, meeting strict fuel emission controls, fuel efficiency, a four-wheel drive vehicle, and an air and water-cooled engine.
Most Porsche vehicles are air-cooled, but it was considered that the sheer heat being generated by this engine would require additional cooling.
And where does all that energy go?
Well, at its maximum speed, in excess of 300 kilometres an hour, the 959 generates 200% more energy than the 911, doing its maximum speed of 245 kilometres an hour.
With that kind of engine output, allowing acceleration from zero to 100 kilometres an hour in five seconds,
the task of putting that amazing amount of torque safely and efficiently through all four wheels was not insignificant.
Porsche have used electronics to optimise performance out of all four wheels,
and stretching to the leading edge of technology have programmed the car's torque biasing to suit at least four different road conditions.
The car's own intelligence tells it how to drive.
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Once engineering specifications are determined, another team of designers takes over.
These are mostly London School of Design trained, though Porsche's head of design, Tony Lapine, says buying a Porsche is something else entirely.
When you buy a Porsche, you don't buy a Porsche so much in the showroom.
It's a thing that probably happens, I don't know, at three o'clock in the morning in bed.
You finally are ready to buy a Porsche, and then the reasons that you have for that purchase are very, very private and very much your own.
This is an exact one to five scale model of the Porsche 959.
This clay and metal model precedes the development of most new production lines at Porsche,
but with the 959 designers were given a deadline of about three months before a prototype had to come out.
So this scale model was aerodynamically tested in a wind tunnel, given the green light,
and from there the artist could take over from the engineer.
Working within very narrow parameters, the artist goes to the two-dimensional palette
and begins shaping and giving the 959 its own character.
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The aesthetic side, it's on the road that the car shows off.
Its rear engine with a six-speed gearbox to cover the range gives the car extraordinary traction in cornering.
And despite the electronics package which provides just the right amount of thrust on all four wheels,
whatever the road surface, driving the 959 is like trying to tame a wild animal.
And just for the record, all 200 vehicles in the limited edition series have been spoken for.
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The term vector suggests considerable magnitude and direction,
a suitable name then to stamp on an automobile that can lay claim to being the fastest street legal sports car in the world.
The vector is officially known as a high technology, multi-role exotic.
It's designed to be docile enough to go shopping in,
but on weekends you can campaign it successfully in super modified sports car races.
The fact that it's two cars in one perhaps helps you swallow the $200,000 price tag.
You don't have to travel very long in the vector twin turbo to realize that it pushes the outside of the envelope
for what you'd expect of a normal road going vehicle.
It's a no compromise blend of race car design and aerospace technology.
Certainly a lot of the parts that go into the car are milled and manufactured to aircraft industry standards.
And the performance, well it's totally breathtaking.
The sweat and inspiration for the vector twin turbo really comes from California industrial designer Jerry Weigert.
Jerry you must get some extraordinary reactions to a car like this.
Yes the response is really incredible.
It's kind of like driving a space shuttle into a commercial shopping area and the people just go into shock.
You're probably almost tired of doing it, but perhaps we can have a look at the power plant.
Okay let's do that.
Boy that's a lot of engine Jerry. It's about 5.7 liters, but what would the significant things be about the engine?
The power plant is a twin turbocharged all aluminum V8. It incorporates twin Garrett Air Research turbochargers with water cooled housings.
It has a large air to air intercooler which cools down the intake charge and allows you to run on less octane fuel.
Of significance is that you can increase the horsepower by cranking up the boost in the cockpit
and generating from anywhere from 600 to over a thousand horsepower.
Locomotion in the vector is heady stuff. You're mildly intoxicated by brute power
and immersed in wraparound stereo from 26 speakers molded into the Gold Wing doors.
The cockpit's fairly spartan. The center of attention is the analog bar graph instruments that give the cars vital signs.
The rest of the car is really a coalescence of decades of auto technology.
Brakes are massive AP Lockheed discs commonly used on Formula One and Can-Am race cars.
Suspension is De Dion style favored by Alfa Romeo and Aston Martin.
Surprisingly the transmission is three speed automatic. A patented stick shift design that means you never miss a gear.
Weigert is something of a maverick. He graduated from one of the leading industrial design colleges in the United States.
Lear and Porsche offered him work but instead he opted to go it alone.
Seven years ago without financial backing he began working on the Vector.
Now he's ready to begin a modest production run of the vehicle out of this small converted warehouse in Wilmington, a Los Angeles suburb.
The small group of workers he has around him are also co-investors in the Vector project.
The outer skin is made out of aramid fiber or Kevlar and then they use S-type fiberglass and for the areas that need reinforcing like this sill area here they use unidirectional carbon fiber.
The passenger and the driver are protected by an integral steel roll cage
and it's heartening to know in the event of the unthinkable a high speed impact that the fuel cell is down here behind the seats but in front of the firewall
and inside the fuel cell is a fire resistant mesh which is called Explosave.
There's also an automatic and manual halon gas fire extinguisher system on the car.
The Vector is a cross between an art form and Craig Breedlove's weekend run about.
But for most of us unfortunately it's an unobtainable fantasy, something akin to the Hope Diamond.
But if you had a very malleable insurance broker and really good collateral and asset backing then maybe this will be the car for you.
There's one thing for certain though, there will always be lots of other car lovers who will share your enthusiasm in the vehicle.
Excuse me.
It's a Vector Tandem, twin turbine.
We said at the beginning that supercars are really just ordinary vehicles that are way ahead of their time.
But eventually the technology comes down to all of us.
This Mazda MX-5 bears some striking similarities to the Lotus sports cars of 15 years ago.
So if that trend continues then the cars that we've just been seeing are the sort of cars that we'll all be driving in the years beyond 2000.
We hope you enjoyed the Beyond 2000 supercar video, proudly sponsored by Ample, Australia's own.
Thank you for watching.
Traveling this country.
There's nothing else like it in the world.
And there's another thing about it that you won't find any place else.