Last week, the Brabham name confirmed its return to motoring with the announcement of the BT62 supercar — a marriage of hypercar tech, aggressive aero-laden design, and wonderfully retro paint selection.
All of that stuff was well and good, obviously. It'll be potent, with 522kW to play with from its 5.4-litre V8 and an eye-popping dry weight of just 972kg. Plus a rear wing that'd have NASA shaking in its boots.
But there's always a certain undertone of disappointment when these kinds of machines are announced as being track-only weapons. It automatically kills any chance of seeing or hearing one of these on the road.
Not to scoff at incredible figures and an undoubtedly incredible car, but there is a slight 'cop out' vibe to it ...
Only, a production version of the BT62 could possibly be on the cards. At the car's London launch, Motoring quizzed David Brabham (Brabham Automotive founder and former Supercars Championship and Formula 1 driver) about if a production variant was on the cards.
His reply? “Yeah, that might be a good assumption.”
Deeply ironic, of course, that in the wake of these kinds of launches where long 3,000-word press releases are beamed around the world for motoring media to hoover up, that a seven-word quote could conjure just as much excitement.
The Brabham won't be the first high-speed machine to be reversed engineered from a race or track-car base. Many cars from the '90 Le Mans homologation era did this, including the Porsche 911 GT1 and Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR. More recently there's Ford's GT, which won its class at Le Mans before the road car was even released.
Five years ago, the motoring world went gaga over a new 'holy trinity' of supercars; the McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, and the Ferrari ... LaFerrari.
It prompted many to question whether we were in the midst of a golden age of cars. Perhaps we still are, but the speeds are getting higher. The upcoming Aston Martin Valkyrie, McLaren Senna, and Mercedes-AMG Project One look set to erect a new benchmark again.
It might be left field, but the Brabham could join them.