Raw materials go in, racing cars come out. But then, every now and again, something street-legal escapes.
The latest escapee is the car before you: the G56 GTR. The feral one. Steve Cropley and I have come to Garforth to catch up with Ginetta boss Lawrence Tomlinson and drive the new car, along with a couple of versions of the new G56 racing car, from which the road car is derived.
Road-going Ginettas don’t come along often but are always worth investigating. You may recall the 2012 G40R (everyone who drove it certainly does). Here was an 800kg tin-top Lotus Elise alternative with the drivetrain from a Mazda MX-5.
It arrived around the same time as the G60 – no, not the LMP1 G60, but a carbon-tubbed, Porsche Cayman-type coupé with a mid-mounted Ford V6. It was meant to have an element of daily usability, if you didn’t mind the absence of ABS, traction control and power steering. Or servo-assisted brakes. But it was fast, fun and honest.
But since those cars? Nowt. Ginetta has instead spent the past decade developing prototype racers and honing its Ginetta Academy into one of the world’s best grass-roots motorsport series. So what exactly is the new G56 GTR?
Mike Simpson, works driver turned globetrotting head of motorsport, explains from the passenger seat – voice raised over an outrageous, ripping-calico blare straight from the pages of Mark Donohue’s brilliant book The Unfair Advantage.
We will learn more about this car’s American heart shortly, but fundamentally the GTR is a detuned version of the GT4-class G56 racer, says Simpson, albeit with the simpler, two-way adjustable dampers of the friendlier G56 GTA that races in the single-make Ginetta GT Academy Championship.