We’re pretty certain that only a few people still remember the 1988 Jiotto Caspita, which was back then billed as a Formula 1 car.
This project began in 1988, when Yoshikata Takamoto and Minoru Hayashi developed the idea of a new supercar. Wacoal Corp was the president of Wacoal Corp which manufactures women’s apparel. Dome was the president of Dome which is a Japanese race car manufacturer and designer. Wacoal Corp was the initiator of the project, Dome was responsible for research and manufacturing, and Jiotto Design handled the styling. The idea behind the mid-engined vehicle was to have rear-wheel drive and a lightweight body.
It was developed with an electrically-retractable rear spoiler and combined aluminum with carbon fiber reinforced plastic (remember it was the late 80s) to achieve a low weight of only 2,734 pounds (1,240 kilograms). It had gullwing doors, and a hydraulic lift suspension system that raised the car by 2.3 inches (6 centimeters).
It was a Formula 1 car because it came with a Subaru-sourced 12-cylinder engine that Motori Moderni co-developed and derived from an F1 car. The flat-12 3.5-liter motor produced 450 horsepower (335 Kilowatts) with 268 pound-feet (363 Newton meters) of torque. This was delivered to the rear axle via a six-speed Weismann transmission. It made its public debut in this configuration at the 1989 Tokyo Motor Show. This generated lots of buzz. The plan was to launch an affordable production car, with an estimated cost of $700,000. (Y=100,000,000). Production was scheduled to begin in October 1990. Only 30 units were planned for assembly over five years.
Subaru provided a twelve-cylinder engine for the 1990 Formula 1 season to the Scuderia Coloni team. However, Subaru was not happy with the car’s performance and ended the partnership. The engine was not available for the Jiotto Caspita, so engineers had to find another heart. In 1993, a Judd race-spec V10 produced 585 horsepower (436 kW) at an astonishing 10,500 rpm and 284 lbft (385Nm). The V10-powered Jiotto Caspita looked quite different. It ran the sprint to 60 mph (96 km/h) in 4.7 seconds, and reached a top speed of 199 mph (322 kph). These figures are based only on technical specifications and the developers have never published performance statistics.
The updated V10 model was not able to make it to the assembly line because it was released at a time when the global recession hit the automotive industry. The result was that there wasn’t any viable business case anymore for supercars and high-end cars. Overall, the Jiotto Caspita was a victim of bad timing. It was a shame that it didn’t make the cut since it had so much potential, especially the 1993 version, which looked much better and was almost ready for production.