WORDS: OLLIE KEW IMAGES:MANUFACTURER
TOPGEAR TOP 9
01 Porsche GT3 RS sticker badge
A 992 GT3 RS weighs 1,525kg – 165kg more than the original 996 GT3 RS, which did without stuff like active aero, DRS and adaptive suspension.
Still, in a sop to lightweighting you’ll find no enamel badge at the end of the bonnet: the Stuttgart crest is replaced by a lacquered sticker.
02Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 pedals
One of the delightful lightweight details on Gordon Murray’s T.50 is the spindly pedal setup.
By using the sharpened edges as the anti-slip surface, Gordon managed to shave 300g from the mass of the pedals in his iconic McLaren F1, which were already works of titanium art.
03 Honda NSX Type R gear gaiter
Honda’s engineers turned to weight saving to up the performance of the most extreme NSX. One measure was to replace the leather gear gaiter with a sort of chainmail technomesh. You wouldn’t want to mash crumbs into it, but Honda would rather you didn’t eat in it anyway.
04 Alpine A110 rear brake caliper
Normally an electronic parking brake uses its own tiny caliper to grip the disc. Brembo saved 2.5kg here by integrating the handbrake into the main brake caliper. Alpine also used the bare minimum of brackets to hold the brake lines.
Each deleted bracket saved a further 20g.
05 Lotus Elise electric windows
When Lotus began offering a Touring pack for the S2 Elise, it claimed the electric window motors it was using to move the Elise’s tiny side windows were so small, the system actually represented a marginal saving versus the manually wound windows with their chunky alloy handles.
06 Porsche Spyder RS bimini top
The hardcore RS Spyder n
