Javier Villa, one of the world’s greatest hillclimbers, debuted his new Peugeot 205 T16 race car for the 2024 season. OK, so there’s actually very little Peugeot 205 T16 left in this machine, and it’s mostly a “full on prototype” underneath the bodywork, but that’s a big part of what makes it great. With a 450-horsepower turbocharged Suzuki 1340cc powering the rear wheels, it kind of doesn’t matter what the car looks like, it’s going to be incredibly fast either way. The fact that this whole low-and-wide package weighs just 1433 pounds just ups the incredible factor.
Unlike a lot of motorsport, the name of the game in hillclimb seems to be all of the downforce and enough power to overcome the associated drag. This doesn’t seem to be a sport of nuance. I’m not sure what part of the rulebook makes a boxy French hot hatch with the drag coefficient of a brick the best starting point for prototype bodywork, but I’m glad it exists. This car looks like it has been widened by at least a meter in order to fit massive tires, and every single panel is fitted with some kind of downforce brute force canard, flick, splitter, or diffuser. This doesn’t have the delicacy of a formula car or prototype, it’s just sick nasty speed.
Seeing a car with actual car bodywork and a giant greenhouse ripping and skipping through corners like a prototype has warped my brain in a ludicrously delightful way. The deep lizard core of my cerebral cavity expects this car to bob and wallow like a forty-year-old hatchback might. The video starts with a walk-around of the car with most of its body off, but I still can’t reconcile the physics of this freakishly quick Frenchie. I love it so much.