GTP Cool Wall: 2001 Tommykaira ZZII

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jahgee
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2001 Tommykaira ZZII

  • Total voters
    110
  • Poll closed .
Cool. Low weight, AWD, powerful engine. Also, it's a Skyline engine. What's not cool is the fact that they didn't make a production model, cause it's not that outlandish of a vehicle. And 90 grand is a great price for something like this. I'd vote it Sub Zero if they actually made a production model.
 
And here's the rub for things like this:
JMoney689
Take the Ford GT90, for example. It might have been the fastest production car in the world had it been produced.
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According to who? Ford said that it made over 720 horsepower. Ford said that it could go 230 MPH and accelerate to 60 in three seconds. Ford even briefly sung a song that it could be put into production before admitting that there was never any intent to. But while they took the admirable step and actually made it a running car (Clarkson and Motor Trend both gave it a go around), even the testing parameters were strictly controlled because the handbuilt concept car with the handbuilt engine that Ford spent 3 million dollars to build wasn't actually engineered to do the things they said it could.




And what's cool about saying that you can do stuff that you can't actually back up? (I would vote cool on a GT90 anyway, but that's not the point)
 
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JMoney689
Exactly- most concept cars are good ideas and the ones that don't get produced would have been cool.
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Most concept cars are terrible ideas, really. Why? Well...

The reasons they aren't are usually because the marque selling it is afraid it won't sell well, or that they might lose money on it.
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Both very good reasons to not produce a car. A car company is a business first.

The car that would have been sold ends up as lost potential. It should have been great, but it was held back by its creators. That's not cool.
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Neither is make-believe.

Take the Ford GT90, for example. It might have been the fastest production car in the world had it been produced.
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"Might" being the key word: Ford could throw any numbers they felt like throwing out there, because there was absolutely no way to prove them wrong. Much like this ZZII: it's entirely possible the car could've weighed only 1000kg with the heavy RB26 and accompanying AWD. It's entirely possible the car could've been sold for the '00's equivalent of $90k. Companies far bigger than Tommy Kaira couldn't really hit all of those numbers back then in one single package, but they did have to contend with that whole actually-building-it thing.

TVR Cerbera Speed 12? Could have been the most powerful production car in existence. Was never built because of TVR's buzzkill test driver. "Unusable on the road", he said.
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Yep. Peter Wheeler (the company owner, not test driver), a guy that had years of racing under his belt and was instrumental in TVR's uncompromising, no-assist approach to road cars, must've just been a buzzkill.
 
Custom878
I guess I'm the only one that finds exclusivity to be cool. Oh well.
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The TVR Speed 12 is actually road legal and purchasable now, if you could ever convince the current owner to part with it... the company built one out of spares and sold it to one lucky guy. That's exclusive.

The Peugeot 908 Concept was a fully-built, functioning road car... one that could be driven on the road at high speeds, apparently, though the suspension and handling wasn't completely sorted out. Somewhat exclusive, but still a concept car, and you can't purchase it for road use, legally... so... meh.

A ZZII is Unicorn Rainbow Poop. It never went past the car show concept stage. Nobody knows if it will hit 300 km/h without blowing up. Nobody knows if it will idle in traffic for five minutes without blowing up. Nobody knows if it will set a good lap time at Tsukuba or pop all the welds on the intake manifold if it ever tries to go around a corner at more than walking pace.

The Autobacs RS-01, based on the ZZII concept, was supposed to be the real deal, built with FIA Homologation in mind... but it's been over a decade since they last showed it and... nothing. No racing version. No production version. So it's still, technically, Unicorn Rainbow Poop.

There's nothing cool about Unicorn Rainbow Poop. It looks glossy and shiny, but it still smells like 🤬
 
niky

A ZZII is Unicorn Rainbow Poop. It never went past the car show concept stage. Nobody knows if it will hit 300 km/h without blowing up. Nobody knows if it will idle in traffic for five minutes without blowing up. Nobody knows if it will set a good lap time at Tsukuba or pop all the welds on the intake manifold if it ever tries to go around a corner at more than walking pace.
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I see no issues with it being able to do this, being based off an existing drivetrain. It's not like a certain other concept car that will not be named.

niky
The Autobacs RS-01, based on the ZZII concept, was supposed to be the real deal, built with FIA Homologation in mind... but it's been over a decade since they last showed it and... nothing. No racing version. No production version. So it's still, technically, Unicorn Rainbow Poop.
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I thought they sold one of them. Guess I was wrong.

No one to ruin it, I guess. :P
 
The existing drivetrain was one that occasionally had brushes with cooling problems and lubrication problems even when it wasn't installed in the middle of a low slung supercar with racing aspirations.
 
Tornado
The existing drivetrain was one that occasionally had brushes with cooling problems and lubrication problems even when it wasn't installed in the middle of a low slung supercar with racing aspirations.
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Indeed... was pondering this issue over lunch after making the last post... I suppose the mega-horsepower "tuned" ZZIIs we've been hooning around in Gran Turismo are a pipe dream in more ways than one...
 
niky
The Autobacs RS-01, based on the ZZII concept, was supposed to be the real deal
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Somehow I always manage to forget about that. Despite it being in one of my favourite games, GT Advance 3.

Me, I just sort of chose with my heart not head and went straight for cool. Sorry.
 
It looks pretty cool and its got a pretty epic powertrain. But it never caught on even as a concept and never went into production so that drops it down to a Meh.
 
Tornado
According to who? Ford said that it made over 720 horsepower. Ford said that it could go 230 MPH and accelerate to 60 in three seconds. Ford even briefly sung a song that it could be put into production before admitting that there was never any intent to. But while they took the admirable step and actually made it a running car (Clarkson and Motor Trend both gave it a go around), even the testing parameters were strictly controlled because the handbuilt concept car with the handbuilt engine that Ford spent 3 million dollars to build wasn't actually engineered to do the things they said it could.
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Interesting how Clarkson actually praised and was giddy for the GT90 in that video. In a later video, also in the days before 2002 Top Gear, he says on the death of the supercar that the GT90 "had a top speed of 0 and handled like it was in a cartoon."

Everything you say is correct though. For this Tommy Kaira; SUBCC. And fanboys. And GT fanboys.
 
This car destroys all in GT6.

Bathurst race 2 lap spirt
650pp-I win with the ZZII
600pp-I win with the ZZII
550pp-I win with the ZZII
owner rages and makes everyone drive M3 CSLs
Priceless

This car would drive like it is a bat out of hell
 
SlipZtrEm
Yep. Peter Wheeler (the company owner, not test driver), a guy that had years of racing under his belt and was instrumental in TVR's uncompromising, no-assist approach to road cars, must've just been a buzzkill.
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He and his company spent millions developing a car that he suddenly decided was a bad idea when he drove it, AFTER his designers and engineers had worked to build it. That's not cool at all.
 
JMoney689
He and his company spent millions developing a car that he suddenly decided was a bad idea when he drove it, AFTER his designers and engineers had worked to build it. That's not cool at all.
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Since when the Speed 12 was a road car project? The Speed 12 I know about, was meant to be GT1 race car for Le Mans, but when it was ready, the regulations had changed, which meant that the Speed 12 was both pointless as a race car and unusable as a road car. The cars built were converted to GT2 spec and raced in British GT Championship.
 
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The Speed 12 was the attempt to build a car strictly for GT1, meaning just the one road car and all the tricks being done my Porsche/Toyota/Nissan etc. The Cerbera Speed 12 was the attempt after the fact to salvage something out of the project in the form of a more regular production car (at least by TVR standards) but they couldn't quite pull it off. The two cars are closely linked in development, but are still distinct from each other.
 
Going to hold back on voting on this one for now. Whilst I don't agree that one-offs and race cars have no place on this board, I think there is a strong argument for the omission of concept cars, especially if they were never fully tested independently. So whilst the ZZII isn't "vapourware" (surely that means it never existed at all), it's not even clear whether the ones that were built and shown had the intended internals, or any at all.

If there was a bit more substance to it and if it looked anything like living up to the figures and its performance in the GT franchise, I would give it an SZ without blinking. I even think it looks really nice. But where is it/are they now? And what happened to the Autobacs Seven version? Nah can't vote on this one.

PS: The lack of correct info regarding the (Cerbera) Speed 12 is strong in this thread, though that has always been the way.
 
I'm sorry, but I don't give a flying ferby that it's a concept, I'm calling it a cool car! 👍
 
TheCracker
I doubt TVR ever spent 'millions' developing anything.
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Yeah, I suppose not...

tn_7686-L.jpg


Look how far to the right the pedals are compared to the seat.
 
Look good and unique, but the quality (?). Hmm, cool.
 

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