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Put the Ascari KZ-1's stats down on paper and it sounds like something you'd be prepared to auction body parts for. And I'm not talking a little finger, something really useful, like a kidney, or an eye - not the one with the squint.

But before you book that trip to the backstreets of Calcutta, it's probably easier if I break it down a bit.

The car itself is powered by the old BMW M5 V8 block, albeit totally reworked from its previous 400-brake to produce 500bhp. That's a pretty damn fine start.

Mid-mounted in a carbon-fibre monocoque and driving the rear wheels, it's mated to a six-speed manual gearbox and is capable of 0-60 in 3.7 seconds and 200mph potential. Numbers to stop dinner party conversations dead.

Which all sounds lovely. Until you hear the price of exclusivity, and your mouth will need shutting with a hydraulic ram.

The Ascari KZ-1 costs £235,000. Now that's a lot, even for the rarefied clientele that Ascari's owner Klaas Zwart is punting for, especially as the KZ-1 is not exactly a showstopper is it?

It isn't ugly. It has a slightly borrowed beauty (those Peugeot headlamps don't help), but there's no mistaking that this is a fast car - at least visually.

The side profile highlights that it isn't a particularly big supercar - it looks wieldy even though there's a necessary width to the track.

The back suffers a little from exhaust and Venturi overload, but you do get more and more keen on it, especially as that size issue makes it less immediately intimidating than, for example, a Lamborghini Murciélago.

Jump in, and the Ascari immediately has a way-out feel, but you might notice some discrepancies from the £235k impression you wanted to have. Basically, this is a left-hand drive 'prototype' car which doesn't meet the specification that customers might expect.