This sub-$7,000 sportscar might be just what the future needs

This past weekend saw Monterey Car Week at perhaps its most excessive ever. The auctions set records, including $42.9 million for one of six Shelby Daytona Coupes and $40 million for Ferrari’s first Luce electric vehicle to reach private hands. Hypercars and restomods with seven-figure price tags filled the California peninsula, and yet I know I’m not alone in mustering little enthusiasm for this kind of thing. Which is why today I’m writing about the antithesis of all that: a hand-built, low-cost, efficient, and remarkably cheap car that suggests one possible future for driving enthusiasts, should we choose to take it. This is because the answer cannot just be “add more power and go even faster.” Forget hypercars; even regular sports cars like a Porsche 718 Boxster or Toyota Supra have more performance than you can comfortably use on the road, and each version gets more power and costs more than the last. Add the cost of tires, consumables, a thirsty engine, and the fact that cars are all so ludicrously expensive to begin with these days, and soon the whole thing starts to look unsustainable. The shape is certainly unique; Ely told Smith he wanted to make something using 2D shapes with ’90s sci-fi vibes, a design brief that appears to have been well met. A pair of small holes in the nose suck air into the AR1’s radiator, with NACA ducts along the side allowing the warm air to escape. In addition to the aerodynamic pods that house each wheel, the exposed suspension elements also wear teardrop-section covers to cut drag.