Renowned British engineering group Prodrive has announced it is manufacturing a home simulator, and it will be release this summer.
Prodrive and Motorsport UK Chairman, David Richards CBE, cited the plain appearance of the majority of simulators today as the reason for Prodrive’s move into the sim market.
“Most racing simulators on the market today are very functional but not particularly attractive,” he stated.
“What I wanted was something that was more like a piece of modern art; something you would be proud to have on display in your home like a grand piano or sculpture, indeed something that would not look out of place in a gallery of contemporary art.”
Although an engineering firm with a number of eclectic projects, Prodrive is most famous for its motorsport exploits. It led the Subaru World Rally Championship team to three drivers’ and three manufacturers’ titles, boasting world-class drivers like Richard Burns and Colin McRae. Richards himself was co-driver to Ari Vatanen, the pair taking the WRC title together in 1981.
Prodrive has also won races and championships across the most prominent circuit racing series in the world, including the British Touring Car Championship, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the FIA World Rallycross Championship and F1 with BAR Honda. It now operates Lewis Hamilton’s x44 Extreme E team and Aston Martin Racing’s World Endurance Championship squad.
To help bring Richards’ idea to fruition, Prodrive employed the services of Warwick-based design studio CALLUM, founded by legendary car designer Ian Callum. Through a long career with Ford, Tom Walkinshaw Racing, Aston Martin and Jaguar, Callum had a hand in the iconic designs of cars like the Ford Escort RS Cosworth, the Aston Martin DB9, the Nissan R390 and the Jaguar F-Type.
Callum commented: “Designing the simulator was a great opportunity to create something technically stimulating as well as visually abstract.”
The simulator is not the first time CALLUM and Prodrive have collaborated either, as they contributed to the BRX Hunter T1+ Dakar Rally car, finishing second in the hands of Sebastien Loeb and Fabian Lurquin on the desert endurance event earlier this year.
Prodrive’s simulators are set to be manufactured at the company’s base in Banbury and be constructed from a combination of ‘natural materials and carbon composites.’
Other than a teasing soft-lined silhouette image no more details have been released on its specification or price, but all indicators point to this being a fresh take on the home simulator concept.
It will certainly be interesting to compare Prodrive’s effort to the £57,500 Aston Martin AMR-C01 as well as the range of simulators recently released by Brabham.
What do you think about this collaboration between Prodrive and CALLUM? Let us know in the comments below.
