Kimera is building a Lancia Montecarlo Turbo ‘tribute’ that’ll race at Pikes Peak

Kimera has today revealed its intention to pay tribute to one of the lairiest Group 5 racers ever built. It will be called the ‘K-39’, and it will – we assume – track closely to the Lancia Montecarlo Turbo.

That’s because Kimera intimated as much. “A project born from another act of love and celebration of motorsport history: a tribute to a Group 5 silhouette that dominated the World Sportscar Championship in 1980 and 1981,” the release eulogised.

Consulting Top Gear’s Big Book of World Sportscar Championship Winners (aka: The Internet) reveals said motorsport icon to be the Martini-liveried monster pictured above. That car was a silhouette racer – sharing only the centre section and engine block with the road-going Montecarlo – which meant Lancia and Dallara could go nuts on the rest of it.

And nuts, it indeed went. The original car dominated in its heyday, using a 1.4-litre very heavily turbocharged Abarth engine to record a whopping 490bhp and countless victories. In a car that weighed less than 800kg.

Kimera describes this next project as “no longer a restomod, but a true hypercar”, and will build both a racing version intended to summit Pikes Peak quite enthusiastically, along with a version intended for road use.

We’ll hear more on 15 May, so stay tuned…