AIM EV Sport 01 Plans to Break the Goodwood Hillclimb Record

AIM EV Sport 01 is a new electric supercar on a mission at Goodwood…

Thanks to the wind tunnel dictating how a car should look – and so much time passed of course – it becomes ever harder for the designers at automotive manufacturers to create distinctive and new-looking sports cars.

Shiro Nakamura has had a go with the new AIM EV Sport 01, giving it a (maybe accidental) look of a 1950s ideal for a moon landing space craft: it keeps the aerodynamic flow, but has systematically changed the way the AIM looks as far as curves go, removing all but the basics.

New EV Sport 01 Takes AIM At Goodwood’s Legendary Hillclimb

The AIM EV Sport 01 fuses an ultra modern design with a nod to iconic classics

Shiro Nakamura played a big part in my career at Nissan, having redesigned the Skyline into the striking, modern, and aggressive R35 GT-R. I confess that it wasn’t a car I particularly liked; it felt a little disconnected to drive, but at the time it was clearly a giant leap forward that in part revolutionised how Nissan began to be perceived – from the safe Almera to the exciting GT-R.

Here, the 70-year old Nakamura proves that age doesn’t necessarily mellow as the rear-wheel drive AIM EV Sport 01 looks set to raise a few eyebrows at the forthcoming Goodwood Festival of Speed 2023 where it will take on the legendary Hillclimb.

Driven By AIM APM200 Electric Motors

As an EV concept goes, this is quite a way to reveal what you can do with a battery; the AIM EV Sport 01 will endeavour to complete the challenging 1.16-mile climb, the “narrowest, bumpiest, least grippy course I’ve ever driven” according to Juan Pablo Montoya.

The AIM EV Sport 01 began life as an idea to showcase the new AIM APM200 electric motor (boasting the world’s highest power-to-weight ratio), but due to such a positive reaction to the car itself, AIM decided to make this a bit of a project and see where it might take the company.

Inside, the EV Sport 01 has two APM200s which are both dedicated to the rear wheels using an Advanced Torque Vectoring System.

The result is an impressive 483bhp on a lightweight vehicle with 531lb ft of torque – hence the Hillclimb seems like something the EV Sport 01 is entirely up for.

In fact, AIM has stated that they believe that this EV concept car is capable of up to 600bhp!

The lightweight car sits at 1,425kg due partly to tubular aluminium framing and a mass of carbon-fibre, while the length is only 3.9-metres long and it sits at 1.2-metres in height.

Considering the rather space-age design, Nakamura says that they took on the spirit of great sportscars from the past, while emphasising a clean and simple design ethos, limiting such things as ‘complicated surfaces’ and being almost a heritage to those classic Japanese sportscars from the 1960s.

So far so good – it doesn’t matter which angle you look at the AIM EV Sport 01, it looks great – refreshingly clean.

If the EV Sport 01 concept can impress on the classic Goodwood Hillclimb – Goodwood runs from Thursday 13 July until Sunday 16 July 2023 incidentally – then we can all look forward to a full release of this car, we hope.

To beat the current record, the Hillclimb needs to be completed in a faster time than last year’s record of 39.08 seconds, achieved by Max Chilton in a McMurtry Spéirling fan car. I think Nakamura knows what he is doing…

Images: goodwood.com