The Cadillac V-One Concept Previews What a Roadgoing Le Mans Race Car Could Look Like
tags:Last year, when Porsche debuted the 963 RSP—a street-friendlier version of its 963 hybrid race car built for Roger Penske—Cadillac evidently took notice. Because the V-One Concept, unveiled today at The Quail, follows the same ideological path, which is essentially, “What if we made our race car a little bit more comfortable and people could maybe drive it on the dang road?” This is, of course, an excellent proposition and a thought experiment that we fully support, even if the chances of Cadillac selling Dallara-monocoque Le Mans racers at our local dealers are probably about the same as the likelihood of reviving the Cimarron. But feel free to place your Polymarket bets now.
Cadillac hasn’t explicitly said that the V-One is intended for street use, but if that weren’t the case, then why not just offer the racer as a track toy and call it a day? Ferrari already does it with the 499P Modificata, after all.
Cadillac says that, compared to its V-Series.R race car, the V-One is “intended to be easier to operate while offering a similar level of performance.” We think the V-One would be significantly quicker than its race brethren, given that it’s unconstrained by pesky LMDh class rules that limit the V-Series.R to 670 total horsepower.
The V-One, meanwhile, is good for 830 combined horsepower from its 5.5-liter DOHC V-8 and electric motor, and while Caddy hasn’t specified which wick got turned up, we’d suspect it was on the loud side given that LMDh cars use a standardized 67-horsepower Bosch motor-generator unit.
Carryover hardware from the race car consists of most of it, including the Dallara carbon-fiber monocoque, the body, and the pushrod-actuated suspension. And, like the V-Series.R, the V-One is a single-seater, but the interior has been poshed up a bit with Cadillac Collection fabrics, a custom user interface (read: screen), and steering wheel buttons that could be tailored to a customer’s desires—you know, if there were customers. The seat would, of course, be fitted to whoever is shelling out what the V-One would cost, which we estimate would be more than a CT4.
Lest you confuse your V-One with all those V-Series.Rs strewn about the Target parking lot, the concept gets unique wheels, V badging, and a sweet paint job that transitions from silver at the front end to deep navy blue at the rear to symbolize day turning to night in an endurance race. Can we figure out how to offer that on Blackwings?
There is also a serialized plaque on the door. Which implies more than one V-One, doesn’t it? We hope so. Because even if nobody figures out how to put a license plate on an LMDh car, it would make for an excellent way to spice up your next HPDE run group at your local road course. And if a production V-One seems unlikely, it wasn’t so long ago that the same could be said of Cadillac building our favorite 668-hp rear-drive sport sedans. Hey, dare to dream.
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Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He's now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.