This 1000-HP Subaru-Powered Widebody Lotus Is Evidence That Japanese Car Culture Is Just Better
It's time to face the music — Japan is just plain better at car culture than the rest of the world. There is nowhere else on Earth that you can find a shop capable of, or even willing to try, swapping a Subaru EJ25 flat four engine with enough boost to blow the moon out of orbit into a Lotus Elise. Even fewer places would make that Lotus look like an old Can Am car from the early 1970s with a massive wedge-nosed widebody kit. This is one of the coolest looking things on four wheels built in the last decade at least, and it helps that the car is also incredibly fast. I'm just going to put this out there and say that more sports cars should be purple, regardless of whether they're sponsored by Hoosier Tire or not. Purple is just a fast and cool color.
It doesn't look like there is much in the way of Lotus bodywork left on this car, retaining pretty much just the roof and window openings. The rest is all Rocket Bunny/Pandem bodykit. It doesn't look all that aerodynamically efficient to me, but there's something about a nose wing/roof scoop/low chassis-mount wing setup and open-to-the-elements rear bodywork that looks like it should be fighting Porsche's venerable 917/30 at Laguna Seca. Blend in the absurd sound of the big Subaru engine and presumably a turbocharger the size of your head, and you've got a recipe for awesome that simply had to have come out of Japan.
Ask yourself if you're really happy. When you have an answer to that question, ask if your life would be improved by driving a tiny lightweight mid-engine British car with 1,000 horsepower of Japanese turbocharged monster sitting right behind your left butt cheek and inhaling through a giant scoop mounted right over your head. Even the most devout monk who had found true enlightenment would probably agree that a rip behind the wheel of this thing would cure pretty much anything that ails you.
Apparently this car, dubbed Lotus Bunny 1, was originally built to conquer Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, though judging by the results from this year's weather-shortened climb to the clouds, the car didn't make it over for the event. Perhaps next year Rocket Bunny Racing will give it another shot. For now, we'll have to keep re-playing this incredible video from February's Attack Tsukuba event. Bunny 1, driven by Akira Iida, doesn't look to be running at full power, as a 1:05 is a relatively relaxed pace for something with 1,000 ponies under the rear clamshell, or perhaps this was just a shakedown test, but either way, it looks and sounds amazing. I hope this isn't the last we see of Bunny 1.
