In 1967, Ford and its GT40 took first place overall in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. No American team racing its own car has done so since, but that could change come the 2020/2021 season of the World Endurance Championship whose highlight is the French classic.
Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, based in Sleepy Hollow, New York, is looking to take the win and beat the world again. It's set to enter the 2020/2021 WEC season with the new Glickenhaus 007 designed for the Le Mans Hypercar class. LMH replaces LMP1 as the new premier class of the WEC starting in the 2020/2021 season.
James Glickenhaus - Image via Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus Facebook page
Glickenhaus was the first to commit to the LMH class, and it's now the first to reveal the design of its contender. Well, at least digital renderings of it.
Glickenhaus CEO and founder James Glickenhaus said last June that the 007 would be a mashup of the company's 003 and 004 race cars, and the 007 looks to be just that, but with a more beautiful design than both those cars.
Glickenhaus 007 Le Mans Hypercar
And just like the 004, the 007 features a central driving position that we should also see on the road-going version. Yes, per the LMH rules, Glickenhaus will need to build a number of road-going 007s to be sold to the public.
In race trim, power in the 007 will come from a 3.0-liter twin-turbocharged V-6 tuned to deliver 840 horsepower. The engine is a bespoke unit developed for Glickenhaus and is capable of running at peak performance for 30 hours straight. The complete weight of the 007 is just 2,425 pounds.
Glickenhaus 007 Le Mans Hypercar
Glickenhaus isn't going it alone in its quest for Le Mans glory. The team has joined up with Podium Advanced Technologies, an engineering outfit based in Italy that has helped multiple other teams deliver class wins in the 24 Hours of Le Mans over the past decade.
The 007 is about to undergo final wind-tunnel testing before engineering work on the car is finalized. The first shakedown is expected to take place in September. The first race of the 2020/2021 WEC season is the 6 Hours of Silverstone scheduled for Sept. 5. The Le Mans round will serve as the final race and is scheduled for the weekend starting June 12 in 2021.
Glickenhaus 007 Le Mans Hypercar
The price of the race car for any customer teams considering entering is 2 million euros ($2.18 million).
Three other teams are confirmed to be going up against Glickenhaus with their own cars. They are Aston Martin with a race-spec Valkyrie and Toyota and ByKolles with new hypercar race cars of their own. Peugeot is also committed to LMH but won't be ready until 2022 at the earliest.
