New Donkervoort P24 RS： The Most Extreme Lightweight Supercar! ｜ 4K

This is the Donkervoort P24 RS, a car inspired by the Lotus 7 but hyper evolved with proprietary carbon fibre technology, sophisticated suspension, refined and radically adjustable aerodynamics and a 600 horsepower 3.5 litre twin turbocharged V6 engine. So today on some fantastic German roads we're going to answer two questions. First, who the f***? The P24 RS really is a spectacular object and so much of it seems the perfect antidote to spiralling weight and ever increasing complication. Put simply, it's a 780 kilo front engine rear drive sports car with a super stiff chassis, manual gearbox and a power to weight ratio to shame most hypercars. You want purist? The P24 RS lists power steering and ABS as options. Donkervoort claim it will pull 2.3G in the corners, cover 0-124mph in 7.4 seconds and run to over 186. Just 150 will be made and the P24 RS It costs around 312,000 pounds plus options. Here we go. Of course, you don't just arrive at a car like the P24 RS. And in fact, Donkervoort's history stretches back to 1978 when Joep Donkervoort decided to import the Lotus 7 into the Netherlands. It's still a family run business actually, run by his son, Denis. But back in 78, The dream didn't really work out because the 7 couldn't be homologated for sale in the Netherlands. Instead he had to develop this car, the S7. So that divergent story begins immediately, away from the Lotus 7, into a different direction. Very unlike Caterham who've basically stayed true to that original 7. So S7, 1.6-litre Ford engine, bigger chassis, different front suspension, a number of changes to make it suitable for the local market. Lotus didn't really like them using the S7 name, so this is the S8 which came along in 82. Two litre Ford engine this time, bespoke front suspension, but there was a lot more to come. So the S8A came along in 1985, the A is for Amber, so Joep's daughter. Fuel injection added, still the Ford engine, new independent rear suspension, so ticking along really with the upgrades but you can see how big a leap they started to take with this car the D10 that came out in 1988 so turbocharged Ford engine now but the key about this car is the aerodynamics you can see that they're really starting to think about aero and that that's going to be a big part of their future aesthetically and also from an engineering point of view For now, this is the end of the Donkervoort Ford story and in their place we find Audi power. First in the experimental D20 fitted with a 2.4-litre V6 and then the D8 production car which used the classic 1.8-litre turbocharged four-cylinder Audi engine and was introduced in 1999. The D8 GT arrived in 2007 and was the first closed-roof model. Denis Donkervoort raced it with good success in the GT4 category too. Taking us almost up to date is the D8 GTO, O for open, introduced in 2011 and with Audi's brilliant five-cylinder turbocharged engine. And that takes us all the way to the F22 which came out in 2022, completely new chassis, new aero, new interior, new roof system, carbon fibre obviously, everything was changed except the powertrain. Effectively they kept that Audi five-cylinder engine, it was developed by ABT for them, 500 horsepower, but it laid the foundation for what was to come. They didn't want to change the powertrain at the time but they knew that that was coming they wanted a different engine more power more response and that's led very nicely into what we have now which is the P24 RS which is just a whole different world brilliant story has led us to this the P24 RS and i wanted to start inside the car because it's such an alien environment you don't really see Donkervoort i've always wanted to drive one so let's talk about the interior first off the driving position It's sort of reminiscent of a Caterham in that you're sat right over the back axle, but the car feels so much more substantial. It feels small, but not teeny, not like a teeny lightweight track car. And actually, the long bonnet, the placement of where you're sat within the chassis is sort of reminiscent of something like a Ferrari 812 Superfast, which is a pretty good thing to be reminiscent of, isn't it? What else have we got in here? The fit and finish is actually lovely. Everything you touch is cool. I love the sweet perfect carbon fibre and leather and there's some cool details. You can see the inside of the chassis in the footwells which is quite fun. The environment itself is a pretty tactile place as you'd hope really. I've got physical controls for the heater, heated seats which came in useful earlier today, wipers, the headlights, there's also the um Indicators on here just like in a Lamborghini or a Ferrari but the real key to this car is down here and again physical buttons just what we want. The engine, the power to choose engine they call it. It's three modes. PTC, C for comfort, T for touring, P for performance. Those steps are 400, 500 and 600 horsepower. Traction control and ABS are combined into one controller so you're controlling both when you change. your position on this little dial down here most restrictive is level five so let's call that very cold day level three is what i've been told today cool day but no rain on the ground anymore it's a little bit damp this morning but three is a good um compromise setting two and one are more for slicks actually they set this car up for slicks too and then zero is all traction control gone but just a little bit of abs assistance again i think that's a good idea The next little controller does the suspension so traction dampers, no anti-roll bars on this car and they start at level zero which means they're effectively like working like passive dampers and then they click up from one to five so increasingly stiff, increasingly more roll control to really dial this car down into the surface. Honestly on the road I'd use zero and one you don't need to go any stiffer than that again the beauty of not having huge amounts of weight. You don't need super aggressive damping to support the car, support that body all the time. So the car's stiff, but it does move nicely with the surface. It's just a really cool thing. I love these little periscope air vents. They remind me of like early zombies or something. They're not quite as gorgeous in each cut. So there's a real sense of craftsmanship to the interior, but also focus. I was gonna say it's like a Caterham 7 if Pagani did This is maybe a Koenigsegg if they ever did a Caterham 7, but it's so different from those 7 routes that I'm not really going to speak about that car again. Something very, very different, so let's look in detail at it and discover quite how that journey has brought us from a very basic concept to something that genuinely can be talked about in the same rep as those hypercars or high-end supercars. I love doing walkarounds of cars like this and this car in particular because it's so tiny so it's not going to take too long however there's lots of really impressive details that we can go through but before we do a lot of the fascination with the Donkervoort is what lies beneath the skin so let's go back to the very start. So this is the very start of the process, tubular steel, high tensile steel welded together to form this frame. So this is the basic chassis, you can see all these welds they're sort of a goldy colour, there's a high copper content within the welding process that makes it lower temperature, means you're not stressing the raw material, the steel. What you end up with is something that doesn't look particularly dissimilar to something like a Caterham underneath, a bit bigger obviously, but From here, the process really changes because the next station is where the X-Core carbon fibre, which is Donkervoort's own patented material or process, comes together to form the real chassis and it makes it incredibly stiff, 58,000 newton metres per degree. So start over there, powder coated, And then the chassis comes over here and it's being prepared to marry the steel structure with these side panels. This is the carbon fibre X-Core material. It's a sandwich material basically, but it's Donkervoort's own process. So you lay the carbon fibre, then you add this foam and it goes into an aluminium tool. You heat up that foam and it forms these incredibly intricate, lightweight and really, really strong panels. It's a really cool technology also used In WEC by Toyota, they supply to F1 teams that they can't talk about, drones, all sorts of stuff. It's a small place, but there's so much going on here. This is the production facility. So the orange car over there is the very last F22, and then these are the first P24s. So now you can see the chassis. Complete with the X-Core side panels, so now it's ready to get built up. This is actually the very first production chassis P24RS. So this is the X-Core new front structure. It's got suspension mounting points on it. We've got these tractive dampers, carbon ceramic brakes. It's really cool. Everything in miniature because the car is so much lighter than a traditional hypercar. But as you can see, effectively, the F22 had a tubular chassis that went all the way to the front. They cut it off here to create this new X-Core, I guess you could almost call it a subframe. The reason they've done that is because they really wanted to shorten that inlet tract to the front of the engine, increase response time effectively and then This Ford engine, 3.5 litre twin-turbo V6, again the key was response, so they've actually had their own smaller turbos put on the car to make sure that it revs and gets into the boost quicker, it's got unique camshafts, all of this inlet is created in-house, there's just so much care, attention and expertise poured into this car. So that's a little look at the production process. As you can tell, really high quality, innovative and lightweight. That's the key, lightweight and that's what we're going to enjoy on the road hopefully. Let's go back there and look at some of the other details of a fully built finished car. I think it looks absolutely spectacular. The shape, the detailing, but there's so much supercar goodness in this. It's not a cheap car, €298,000 plus taxes, plus options, and there are plenty of options. For example, this exposed lacquered carbon finish, €60,000, and there's plenty more where that came from. The tiniest little ceramic brakes I think I've ever seen. They're so cool. They're an option too. There are three wheel options as a standard braid wheel. This is the forged wheel, so lighter again, but they also do a magnesium option. So you can really tailor the car to what you want and you can go very extreme in terms of lightweight. One thing that is quite interesting is the tires. Now they wanted a sort of extreme track type tire and they've ended up with two options. But they are bespoke, and they're built by Nankang. Probably not the brand that you would normally associate with high-end supercars or hypercars. But this car is so light that when they tried Cup 2s or Pirelli P Zero Trofeos, they just can't get any heat into them. So they need a bespoke tire. But when you go to Michelin, Pirelli, whoever, and ask for a bespoke tire, they want you to order. hundreds of sets which is definitely not what Donkervoort's about. Nankang said yeah we can build you a bespoke tyre that you don't need a minimum order and we know you're a small company they just wanted a flagship brand really so there is a more extreme tyre than this believe it or not this is the sort of more road orientated with a bit of track work tyre but like I said ceramic brakes as an option probably don't need them this car's so light but Again, less rotational mass, less unsprung weight. Other cool stuff, obviously the side exit exhausts. They thought about combining both banks to make more of a V6 sound, but in the end, they just wanted turbo exhaust. It's about that long, I think, the exhaust. So the noise and the heat and the flames will be pretty spectacular. This is the standard exhaust. There's also a titanium option as well. Other things I want to show you, obviously, to open the door, Press this little door handle, we've got these little butterfly doors. You can see it's a pretty high sill, so it's not the easiest thing to get in and out of elegantly. But if I press this button, no, if I press this button... I want you to see the boot because this car's huge, there's like 300 litres of luggage space, you could easily fit two roll-on bags or quite a big suitcase in there which is really impressive. It says max load 50 kilos but they said that's just for homologation purposes, actually you can put in as much as you want. We should talk aero because they've worked pretty hard on the aero and there is a really interesting optional aero kit and it actually consists of physical parts that you take on and off the car so you get a much wider front splitter basically and then you get some really cool rear they're almost like speciali style c shaped wings that fit on the back here they take about 40 minutes to fit But that increases downforce to 90 kilos on the front axle and 90 kilos on the rear axle. So if you're going and doing track work, that's probably something that you'd want to do. On the road, the rears would be fine, but the front, the ride height just becomes too low to really be usable. I actually think it would be a good idea to do some sort of middle ground because this car looks great. But when you put that front splitter on, it looks really, really cool. And if they could make a slightly less extreme one for road use, I think owners would really, really love it. What else do we need to talk about? That's the great thing. Not much else. No hybrid, no torque vectoring. The old F22, the five-cylinder car, had a torsion diff. Now it's got a mechanical plated diff. Five-speed manual box. They say because the car's so lightweight you don't need more than five ratios. It means the car is pretty long geared. I would agree with them that you don't need. six ratios but you don't really need a 780 kilo car with 600 horsepower so why not have a cool little six speed you want to engage with the car that's the whole point of it so the more you change gear in my opinion the better but apart from that i have to say it just seems such a cool little thing the optional roof is fantastic um carbon turns it into a proper little coupe really love the aesthetic when the roof's up and we're going to do that because This is not just a lightweight track car, it's a car that you can use and it's a car that they say will do 300 kilometers an hour. I'm not sure we're going to get quite that fast but I want to see what it's like, has it got that high speed stability, that supercar feel when you start to push it a little bit harder. So with that let's go to the Autobahn. Well as if by magic we find ourselves on a deep street in the Autobahn at dusk with a roof on and that's the magic of video for you. Really, we're not going to try and find out the top speed of this thing, because Donkervoort haven't even done much high-speed testing. I'm starting to speak now. It's fun to see what the high-speed stability is like. I don't think I've ever driven any seven-track car over about a hundred speed, an old R500, Evo, back in the day on a high-speed bowl. It's not locked down like any McLaren, Ferrari, Porsche, etc. The car at 270 is... Wandering around a bit, you definitely need your space. And I think the traction control was getting a bit confused and started to cut power at 250. Shows there's potential, they claim 186 plus, so 300. 280, it was still pulling, so I have no doubt about it. But it's cool to drive it as a coupe, mate. I actually love it. The noise, definitely not tuneful in the way of the five-cylinder Audi engine. Much more industrial. It's playing all sorts of weird tunes, you get a lot of noise from the flywheel. So yeah, it's been a really good exercise to put the roof on and feel how different the car is actually. It just feels even angrier. Well that was a bit of an adventure into the unknown and 280 kph or 174 miles an hour felt plenty fast enough. Despite the luggage space this is perhaps not the ultimate Grand Tourer but it's unique, angry and feels special. Okay let's find some corners shall we? Okay so what's this thing like when you get it in sport mode, turn it up to performance and find the proper bit of road? Well let's find out. Let's get out. Tires still a little cold, the traction control off one, so I've still got a bit of support because this thing is a handle. Ha ha ha ha! I love so much about it, this car's got the optional power steering, really nice because it balances, love the feel, quite low effort. Which I like, because it tells you how light the car is, it doesn't make it too physical, but there's enough information to know when you're pushing on. Tend to get a little bit of understeer first, feel that through the steering, and then it just lights itself up. What the ****? Such an absurdly quick car. The manual gearbox is very... Very physical, it's got this short stubby throw, it reminds me of a TBR actually. I would like to call it a gear shifter because I think it would reduce the effort and make the gate feel a bit better to find. Sometimes going from third down to second can be a bit tricky. The production cars in sport mode will have a rev match function for down changes, this car hasn't got that and honestly the pedal placement is a little bit tricky. The heel and toe downshifts, the accelerator is just a bit too low for me as compared to the brake, but the brake pedal is lovely. It's got these ceramic brakes and there's such lovely response. It's a really good blend of a super responsive pedal, but one that's progressive as well. It's one of the best brake feel systems I can remember. About the engine, well, It's only a 5-speed gearbox, so it's very long-geared. It does about 100 clicks at first. And that's probably not a bad thing, because the engine is a monster. I love the noise it makes. It's just angry. Doesn't sound particularly like any V6 I could think of. You can see, once you're in the sweet spot, in these quick corners, the chance to impose yourself on the chassis. In slow corners, because it's longer gear that actually finds loads of traction and bite, it's these long sweepers where you start to feel the balance and light it up. It's just a huge amount of fun. Let's go. The bad stuff about this car, well earlier on when it was really cold, I was surprised how difficult it was to actually get heat in these tyres. It's got the bespoke tyres, but they still require some warm up. And I think in the corners you can feel exactly what's happening, but you're too greedy with the power just in the straight line, and it lights them up really aggressively. But there's so little to fundamentally criticise, because it's just such a really lovely polished car, this is the prototype. Now I said I wasn't going to mention the Caterham 7 again. But I'm moved to do so. And that's only because I hold that car in such high regard. And what I wanted from this car was that supercar feel, performance, craftsmanship, but to retain the core values of the Caterham, which is fantastic response, that lack of inertia, and adjustability. And this car does that, and that's a gritty magic to have. The interaction, the physicality of a super lightweight, track car, it did it, and it's usable and practical. And left field, the rear groove. I've always been fascinated by Donkervoort, and there's a reason for that, and that's because everything about it is inherently It's fascinating and weird and intriguing, but most of all, it works, it really, really works. This car is supercar, it's lightweight track car, it's something you can use and tour around in. Aside from getting in and out being tricky, it just does so many things, it ticks so many boxes, plus it's mentally fast, just wicked. So much fun in fact that it seems impossible to resist the pull of the Nürburgring, which is just a stone's throw from our shoot location. Donkervoort has pedigree here too. Back in 2005, a D8 270RS recorded a lap of 7 minutes 14.9, setting a new record as it did so. Just imagine what the P24 RS might achieve. Well, the bad news is I'm not allowed to drive the P24 RS around the Nürburgring. It's still a prototype car and they actually want to come here themselves, maybe even set a lap time. So unfortunately I can't join all these lucky people who are about to file out onto the greatest circuit in the world. But there is some good news and that is that the Donkervoort is just such a wicked thing. I think it's completely unique. It combines that physical analogue Really involving driving experience that we all crave with something more akin to a supercar or a hypercar in terms of the finish, the detailing, all this clear carbon. It's really, really cool. And more than that, it's just super left field, really esoteric and they absolutely get it. We flew to Amsterdam, drove to Germany, came to the Nürburgring and I should be sad that I'm not going to get to drive around here but I leave very, very happy indeed. The P24 RS is absolutely mega.