Saleen S7 – First Drive Review « New and Used Car Listings

Saleen S7 – First Drive Review

There’s something great about having 550 horsepower just behind your right shoulder. But a flat torque curve is part of the package with Steve Saleen’s S7 supercar, too, and as we hurtled down the relatively short straights of Foxen Canyon near Santa Barbara, we could feel the intensity that only a 7.0-liter aluminum V-8 with 525 pound-feet of torque can provide.

The fact that the engine has to push only about 3000 pounds of car and cargo down the road makes the sensations that much more vivid. This S7 was one of the long-awaited street-legal versions of Saleen’s Le Mans race car: a carbon-fiber-wrapped tube-frame missile with race-derived components at every turn.

Seen at curbside, the Saleen S7 is a big car. It is more than six and a half feet wide and 15 and a half feet long. The low silhouette helps emphasize that length and width, and the resemblance to contemporary sports-racing cars is obvious to any onlooker. Even if it weren’t, the lusty noises at startup send an unmistakable message about the car’s potential. Big, bad, and gruff, the 7.0-liter fires sounds out of its four tailpipes that reverberate with angry determination.

The S7 attracts onlookers like a free-money stand, and small crowds are soon peering through the windows. What they see through the low rear window is a giant snorkel directing air from a roof scoop to a huge air filter that feeds dual throttle bodies. Below that are the brawny shoulders of a big-lung V-8 based on Ford architecture but essentially remanufactured in every respect. The block shares Ford bore centers and deck dimensions, but it’s a custom casting from a foundry in Los Angeles, custom-machined for its new duties in the S7.