Meet The 500 HP American Made Supercar

What you're looking at is called the Rezvani Beast. It's the first offering from a California collaboration between the guy who designed both the Ferrari Xzeri and Aston Martin DBC and one of the designers who worked on the Vencer Sarthe. It's designed to be a "raw, pure, back to basics experience with minimal electronic interference." In other words: they set out to make the driving experience as close to flying a fighter jet as you can get on the ground. By supercar standards, it's a bargain at $100,000, and it's not vaporware. You can pick up the phone and order one today.

Essentially, the car uses the immensely cool, bodiless, and wickedly fast Ariel Atom as its starting point. Rezvani chose the Atom as the basis for the project because there is "nothing as extreme" that you can purchase today. It weighs only slightly more than a Formula 1 car, tipping the scales at a very svelte 1,550 pounds.

Like the Atom, power comes courtesy of a mid-mounted four cylinder engine. If you ask nicely enough, and with your wallet open, they'll supercharge and turbocharge it to make sure it puts out an even 500 hp. In a car this light, that means you'll hit 60 mph in about the same time it takes the LaFerrari. Seriously.

From there, they toss on a carbon fiber body — the trick that sets this car apart. They realized early on that the Atom's main drawback was poor aerodynamics at high speed. You can see the gorgeous lines they've got planned; amazingly, their biggest challenge was determining where it attaches to the Atom's chassis. They're currently using a CNC machine to make a 3D version of the car, which they'll use to make a mold for all the carbon fiber panels. Then they'll 3D print smaller pieces like lights, mirrors, and the front diffuser.

The Beast is almost infinitely customizable: if you want them to build your car sans windshield or doors that open, they'll do it for you. The general idea is to make a more extreme car than the Atom, so the base car comes with the same bare-bones interior, but they're more than happy to load it down with plenty of leather if you want something more luxurious. Probably the best feature it comes with, however, is high performance driving lessons included in your purchase price.

With performance like this, you're gonna need 'em.


Aaron Miller is the Rides editor for Supercompressor. He's had his lessons, and he's about to start rummaging through his couch in search of spare change for a down payment.