Viva the Revolution

Motorsport has a reputation for innovation across its ranks, from karting through to Formula 1, and everything in between.

The competitive nature of the sport forces high-speed development, quite unlike any other industry, and the engineering solutions that arise see some of the most advanced and technically sound solutions to vehicle performance and safety that might otherwise never be explored.

Revolution Racecars is the perfect example of just such an engineering-based revolution, as Phil Abbott and his partner companies aim to create a successor to one of the motorsport world’s most popular Sportscars, the Radical SR3.

In the late 1970s, through to the mid-’80s, Abbott worked as a welder for Spyder Engineering, a company manufacturing replacement chassis for Lotus cars. In that time, the business made some 2500 spaceframe chassis, and so their construction became second nature to him.

He also took an active interest in motorsport. After racing Ginettas for a couple of years, he felt he had a good understanding of the nature of Sportscar design, but felt that nobody was making the type of racecar he himself wanted to drive.

‘Speed in prototyping was something I picked up very early, and it became a vital tool for our business’

Abbott envisaged something like a modern Lotus 23b, a small, competitive, affordable sports racer that an amateur driver could put on a trailer and run themselves. He shared his vision with fellow racer, Mick Hyde, who would go on to become Abbott’s partner in Radical Sportscars.

‘The whole idea of Radical Sportscars was to provide a sports racer for racers like Mick Hyde and myself,’ says Abbott.