I'm honoured to join the Automation reviewing team. Hailing from a team of race nuts with exposure to tech from the seriously pointy end of performance motorsport, I hope not only to do justice to the supercars tested, but also cast a critical eye over them to give you the most comprehensive insight possible.
2014 Montes SSX-RToday we have for you the Montes SSX-R, what appears to be Montes first attempt at a modern supercar in their 70 plus year history, and what an ambitious first attempt! With the figures it boasts, it looks to be making a tilt at the very highest echelons of supercar. We're here to see whether it delivers the experiences it promises.
Vital Statistics
Top Speed: 404.5km/h
Acceleration (0-100km/h): 2.7 seconds
Power: 868hp@8600rpm
Torque: 747Nm@7500rpm
Fuel Economy: 6.3l/100km
Material Cost: $60770
Production Units: 1498
Weight: 1309kg
pon initial inspection, the strikingly angry LED arrays immediately stand out, the styling reminiscient of the P1 but much sharper, far edgier. Come around to the back however, and suddenly we've jumped back a decade, to the time of the Enzo. But from what I heard about the engine it was packing, if their engineers had told me that this was due to an extreme time warp bubble created by its sheer velocity, I would have believed them. With that in mind, I promptly handed the keys to our tame racing driver, Gryphon Gear's Kai Kristensen, and took notes from the passenger seat.
First impressions on the inside were fairly on the money. The chassis exuded quality, feeling delightfully solid and rigid. The bucket seats and harness were a cut above the aftermarket fare found in modified track cars, and the cabin was suitably spartan, with no fiddly radios or LCD screens or entertainment systems to distract me from the car, the road, and the deafening swarm of angry hornets directly behind me. Four point harness seemed entirely appropriate, as was the comprehensive airbag system which I hoped very much not to test as we prepared for a few stints on the test track, followed by a road-trip rally to see what it was like in "real world" conditions (because we concluded a roadgoing supercar should actually be driven, and not revved around the London CBD in some bizarre and generally fruitless mating ritual).
The SSX-R bursts onto the scene proclaiming "technology isn't trying hard enough!" The lone 6.7L V8 drinking 98RON dishes out power on par with the combined efforts of each of the hypercar triumvirate, yet somehow manages vastly superior economy and reliability. Thanks to its race-spec exhaust, it takes longer to put together by hand than it takes two dozen monkeys on typewriters to produce Othello, but supercars are revered by what they achieve, and the staggering effort and investment it takes to get to that point only really serves to augment the mythology, quite the opposite of your city runabout. On the other hand, I was rather mystified by the presence of a blip of torque
very late into the powerband (at 7100rpm to be precise), as well as the sudden redline when it just felt the engine had a few good hundred rpm left to give. We later discovered that the SSX-R also happened to feature a system essentially identical to Honda's latest VTEC system, which did our heads over in all kinds of ways (which, I'll add, is quite the achievement). Coupled with the super-quick shifting seven speed flappy-paddle sequential box, it works when you can keep in the powerband, provided you don't spin the rears and bin the car into the nearest bush. If, however, for some reason you need to short-shift around a tight corner with funny banking or loose surface (which happens very often in this car for reasons I will discuss later), it makes a whole lot less sense.
Nonetheless, in a straight line, this curiosity leapt off the line with a little screech, thundered through the first hundred in 2.7s, the quarter mile in less than ten, and on our company velodrome track, managed to squeak past 390. That is proper supercar territory, though we noticed it started to run out of puff in seventh (at the 320 mark), so it'd take something akin to Ehra Lessein to hit its claimed top of over 400. But regardless, this car is an easy match for the hypercars of today, at least, in a straight line.
Around corners, over bumps, and just about everywhere else is an entirely different story. The best way to sum up the ride would be like a Rocky Road: fluffy up top, rock hard down the bottom. And bottom out this did, over just about every bump in the road, with a sickening jolt that crushed the jelly out of my intervertebral discs at speed. Because this car is MR and has a rather large lump of engine behind the cabin, the front is very light. Combined with the exceedingly loose sway bar and springs, it had very little understeer at lower speeds, but the feedback was somewhat alarmingly missing. Then add to this the fact that there was no front splitter and the undertray is fully clad, and the car actually intimated towards aeroplaning going over crests, so much so that Kai took to covering the brake every time we approached the end of an incline. Or anything more than the slightest bend on a triple lane carriageway. It's just that vague, and terrifying, not in a good way. Don't get me wrong, some cars are fantastically terrifying in that they have potential to be razor sharp if you're good enough not to die trying (Carrera GT, anyone?), but, well, this wasn't one of them.
Other points of detail where the balance went all awry included the fact that the traction control seemed a bit perfunctory, such that giving the SSX-R the beans coming out of a hairpin still produced lots of swearing and frantic opposite lock, leaving us somewhat confused as to who this car was truly intended for. It's not that the traction control didn't work, rather, it just didn't have the capability to deal with supercar levels of power combined with simulated superhuman levels of incompetence... In my opinion for traction control to be justified, it has to deal with the worst possible driving for what the car can do, and in this flighty rocket, that would be pretty darn awful. Once adequate traction control is there, the ability to turn it off is the desirable option for the brave, the brilliant, and the terminally stupid. Otherwise, it sends mixed messages, perhaps a false sense of security which quickly comes unstuck at the point of no return, and, well, that's just bad. And the brakes, which, for some reason, were both six piston twenty inch discs, generating a braking balance that did not particularly fill me with confidence. The already tail-biased car wobbled dangerously as Kai fought a battle of wits and will with the SSX-R: One wanted to stay pointing the right direction and alive, the other strained to turn around and plow us arse first through the barrier and down a steep ravine. For about the hundredth time that day, I was grateful for our decision to let the pro drive, else I probably wouldn't be writing this now.
The mounting evidence for all these issues was made abundantly clear on the clock. On the test track, the car held its own on the fast straights and the broadly sweeping, well banked curves. The moment it hit the technical sections, however, it lost time. So much time, it was like going from as fast as one of the 2014 hypercars to slower than a 2002 Murcielago... needless to say that was not the kind of time warp effect we were hoping for. In its current state we would not advise testing this car at Nordschleife, because the data suggests it would be a... risky venture.
When Kai finally stopped for a break and offered me the keys, I had to decline. The look of relief on Kai's face (while personally insulting), told much of the story, because the truth is, after seeing for myself what it could do at arguably its best, I just didn't have the heart to try it for myself. Which is a real shame; my impressions had swung around from the SSX-R being a mad balls-out but well-constructed supercar, to one that was accessible enough in that it didn't cost a bomb at the pump or the mechanic's and actually used tyres in sizes you could order from most dealers. But the whole thing was immensely let down by a shonky suspension setup and an aero package about as useful as the wings you find on a Liverpool ricer car. On a car with this much power and speed, you just can't do that, not unless you like seeing a hundred replays of, say, the Stig stuffing the Koeniggsegg CCX into a barrier. Or Mr Bean stuffing his McLaren F1 into a bush.
My suggestion for Montes would be to pay a lot more attention to the tuning. After the extraordinary effort of engineering that went into the powerplant, it seems frustrating to end up with a package that doesn't
quite do it justice. It would be comparatively easy to add a front splitter, swap out the rear brake calipers for a four piston, and tweak the suspension so the rear body doesn't crunch quite so much. Even that much would transform a car that is difficult to access for all the wrong reasons, to one that is easy to drive fast, but is faster still in good hands.
AssessmentPerformance-
Very snappish in a straight line, with oodles of power and speed. I'm not convinced that the unusual VVL setup carries significant benefit, though.
Ride-
Can I say ouch? It's soft where it shouldn't be, and awfully hard where it really shouldn't be. Achilles had two heels, and this is one of them.
Handling-
The other Achilles heel. It's capable of turning competently but constantly leaves you guessing, which, at speeds in excess of 300km/h, is not great. Especially vague at higher speeds.
Refinement-
The chassis and engine are things of beauty. The cabin is far from a work of art, but does a good job of lending itself to the occasion, which is to say, it's not refined at all but it shouldn't have to be.
Equipment-
Or rather, the lack thereof. It fairly screams "take me racing!", which personally, I like, if only it was good at that...
Quality-
No complaints here, save for wishing the traction control wasn't (relatively) half-baked.
Reliability-
Engine reliability is astounding for an 830bhp powerplant like this. The rest of the components, while not as superlative, certainly don't undermine overall reliability.
Running costs-
Almost impossibly low, considering its stature and class.
Safety-
Adequate and reassuringly present, and largely bolstered by the rather excellent chassis.
Overall-
For its various quirks, the SSX-R has the potential to be a properly good supercar that also happens to be rather accessible, if only all the devils in the details were exorcised. As it is, it's neither here nor there and where it could have appealed to both the hardcore track racers and the Sunday road warriors, it doesn't quite fulfill the needs of either and ends up being scary for all the wrong reasons.
Thu Oct 30, 2014 11:48 pm 
