2002 Ultima GTR

To be offered by Silverstone Auctions Sale of Iconic, Classic and Supercars at Supercar Fest on Saturday 20th May.

Guide Price: £45,000 - £55,000

Ultima's story begins in 1983, when engineering maestro Lee Noble (who would go on to start Noble Automotive) founded Noble Motorsport and designed the Ultima Mk1 race car, inspired by the 'Group C' cars of the time. Launched in 1999, the Ultima GTR was dubbed the ‘quickest accelerating and decelerating supercar of all time’, with official performance records that humbled every mainstream car on the planet bar none - Bugatti Veyron, Ferrari Enzo and McLaren F1; none could match the GTR’s plethora of world speed acceleration and deceleration records, and when independently timed around the ‘Top Gear’ test track, was found to be a blistering 6.2 seconds per lap faster than the £450,000 Ferrari Enzo and 4.0 seconds per lap faster than the £1.5million Bugatti Veyron SS. Now universally appreciated as a true supercar, not much can come close to the value for money these exceptional vehicles offer in today’s market.

The car presented here is a 2002 Ultima GTR, which our vendor (an astute classic car collector and race car driver) had fully commissioned by the highly skilled team at TT Motor Racing Ltd., the historic motorsport preparation specialists, based in Dorset. The business is headed-up by Terry Van Der Zee who has been building cars and engines for over 50 years, with his particular interests being developing/building racing engines, gearboxes and differentials.

Terry’s engineering team have been responsible for all the build and set-up work on this car, which had a John Sleath normally-aspirated 6.3-litre Chevrolet V8 (with new Weber 48 DCOEs), a Porsche 5-speed G50 transaxle, and bodywork of our vendor’s own design (specially manufactured by Ace Fibreglass Services of Sherbourne). They also carried out specialist fabrication and the fitting of appropriate race parts, including front anti-roll bar, a bespoke exhaust system, a special clutch and high-capacity radiator, fire system, kill switch, race mirrors, e-marked race tyres, race battery, and right-hand rod gear change etc.

To achieve the end result, a nod perhaps to the Le Mans Bentley Speed 8, our vendor says: “we put all the ingredients of the car, plus my brief, into the blender and came up with the car here, which has been ‘Bentley-fied’. It would be very exciting as a weekend toy/track-day car, and is perfectly docile on the road if driving to and from a racetrack - or just down to the pub. It certainly gets a lot of attention everywhere it goes.”

The car is accompanied by a huge number of receipts documenting the large expenditure, and has just passed an MOT, retaining the Ultima V5C, hence is fully road-legal. To remove the Bentley accents, if desired, would be very easy.

Our vendor continues: “I have taken it to one ‘shake-down’ session at Goodwood, and it is very fast; appropriately loud, and handles like a proper race car. It is freshly painted in BMW Mauritius Blue Pearl and retains its Ultima black leather race seats. The engine made significantly more than 400bhp at the rear wheels (500bhp-plus at the flywheel) on the rolling road when it was taken for set up. It is capable of delivering more power than that but perhaps at the expense of road tractability.”

Frustratingly, our vendor has the opportunity to purchase another very special classic car, so the Ultima needs to be sold to contribute towards this cost. A real opportunity to acquire a properly sorted machine, offering amazing performance and, at this price point, you will not be disappointed.