Reynard back with club racer

Reynard, arguably the world’s top racing car constructor for the best part of two decades, has been relaunched for 2009 seven years after it went out of business.

Company founder Adrian Reynard said he had been motivated by several factors to revive Reynard Racing Cars as a constructor with a bike-engined club racer. Building a Caterham with his son, a desire to nurture young design talent and a conversation with retired Formula 1 and sports car designer Tony Southgate “all chipped in” to the decision to design and build the Reynard Inverter.

“Tony races with the 750 Motor Club and suggested I look at some of its categories,” said Reynard. “I was getting restless and the 750MC’s RGB category for road-going bike-engined cars appealed as it allows innovation.”

The Inverter, which was launched at the Autosport International (ASI) show at Birmingham, is billed as “the ultimate road-legal track-day car”. It will be built around a stainless steel chassis and a 225bhp Honda Fireblade engine.

Reynard is promising cornering forces of 4g for an Inverter running on Formula 3-spec tyres.

“It is unthinkable that a Reynard should not go in the wind tunnel,” he said. “We did some testing in our tunnel [the Auto Research Centre in Indianapolis].”

It is hoped that orders for a car that will cost approaching £30,000 (in RGB specification) will result from the Inverter’s unveiling at the ASI show.

“We’ve designed this car to build it,” said Reynard. “We brought it [to ASI] to gauge interest.” Other projects for Reynard may follow.

“Our business model allows us to transfer into other products,” he said. “There is no reason why we couldn’t do an F3 car, a Formula Ford or some kind of one-make car in the future.”