Transformer

This car has taken on its own bold identity and no longer resembles a Juno, hence the name change

A group of motorsport enthusiasts and professionals are currently building what could be described as the ultimate national-level sports racer in Auckland, New Zealand. The project is the brainchild of John Ryall, a successful Auckland businessman and passionate weekend racer. He has always yearned to build the ultimate sports prototype racer and compete in the New Zealand Sports Car Series.

To this end he bought a Juno 2-litre Mugen Honda powered SSC car in 2014. This had about 250bhp, but that wasn’t really powerful enough. So Ryall set about ‘improving’ the racecar.

When he came across the CFD expertise of David Higgins of Kinetic SIM and the composites skills of Gregor Haeberlin of Haeberlin Composites, what started as a DIY renovate and rebuild project very quickly became a very professional racecar re-manufacture. Also key is the mechanical and fabrication expertise of Grady Homewood of Hitech Motorsport Ltd. If these individuals weren’t available locally, this project would never have got off the ground.

ReinCarnation

The plan, until half way through the rebuild, was for the car to be a 2-litre, 4-cylinder, with the wheel and tyre configuration as per the original. But after extensive discussions with Juno, the car spec became a V6 with wider wheels and tyres that were NZ compliant, but which could be easily converted to FIA Group CN.

The basic idea was to get a more powerful engine and corresponding drivetrain, lighten