Wanna buy a racecar? No problem, I know a guy. Two, actually—veteran
engineers from the renowned McLaren supercar shop. Their new company, Caparo Vehicle Technologies, has designed the first affordable, street-legal racecar: the $300,000 Caparo T1. Sounds steep, until you consider that a used F1 pro racecar goes for about a million bucks—a transmission that can handle the engine's 900-plus horsepower costs $70,000 by itself.

Talk about a dream job. A handful of lucky engineers just outside Paris earn their euros creating wild concept cars for Peugeot, and their only imperative is to advance the state of automotive design. While dreaming up their latest project, they hit upon a radical way to skim weight: ditch the vehicle's rear end. Specifically, they eliminated one of
the wheels and all the accompanying components, including suspension, brakes, and the actual body around it.

Forget about primitive wooden contraptions driven by towheaded tykes down a homemade ramp in Your Hometown, U.S.A. The new—make that the extreme—take on the quaint old soapbox derby features sleek, futuristic projectiles riding on chassis meant to accommodate speeds of 50, 60, even 70 miles an hour.