Portugal’s Latest Sports Car Is the Lightweight, Bare-Bones Adamastor

When somebody decides to build a lightweight sports car that can keep up with supercars while costing half as much, the recipe is fairly straightforward. Depending on the budget, the chassis will have to some sort of a tubular frame, a bonded aluminum tub, or something even more rigid made out of carbon fiber. Then, the team will add a potent, yet lightweight and reliable engine, adjustable suspension, a composite body with a few aero bits, and boom! If engineered correctly, such a product can tear your face off on track, while staying just about road-legal.

The sunny state of Portugal might be new to this game, but the Adamastor project was started six years ago, and now, the brand’s first product is ready for sale. Meet the P003RL, a mid-engined sports car with an astonishing power-to-weight ratio courtesy of a rather standard Ford drivetrain.

What we are looking at is an FIA-spec steel tubular frame with crash structures front and rear, wrapped in a composite body with carbon fiber details. Engine choices include 2.0 or 2.3-liter four-cylinder Ford engines, or for more scoot, Ford’s 2.7 or 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6 powerplants (a naturally aspirated 3.5-liter V6 is also available). When it comes to gearboxes, Adamastor will offer Ford’s manual or automatic choices, or a dog ‘box with straight-cut gears in H-pattern manual, sequential or paddle-shift format and the custom gear ratios of your choosing.

While Adamastor is looking into widening its powertrain portfolio, the P003RL is far from being the only road-legal track car using Ford engines. In England, both the now AC-owned Zenos and the ex-McLaren crew’s Elemental RP1 use tuned Ecoboost four-cylinders.

What else? Well, Portugal’s first sports car also comes with custom made T45 steel tubular wishbones top and bottom, and CNC-machined high strength aluminum uprights, front rocker and pushrods. Its standard dampers are two-was adjustable Konis, with adjustable ride height, caster, camber, toe and anti-roll bar stiffness.

All this in an 1873-lb. package. Sounds like our kind of fun.

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