Panoz Esperante GTR-1 History

The Esperante GTR-1 was a purpose-built GT1-class endurance racer developed in 1997 by Panoz Auto Development with Reynard Motorsport. Despite the Esperante name, it was mechanically unrelated to the road car, sharing only minor styling cues. Its defining trait was a front-mounted V8 driving a rear transaxle — a deliberately contrarian layout in a field of mid- and rear-engined GT1 machines — which, with its long nose, earned it the 'Batmobile' nickname.

Rules required road-legal homologation cars, so only two street-legal GTR-1s were built. On track the GTR-1 contested the 1997 24 Hours of Le Mans, with one of the two entries finishing seventh overall. For 1998 the program evolved into the Q9 'Sparky' hybrid (built with Reynard and Zytek and run by David Price Racing), regarded as one of the first competitive modern hybrid race cars, which won its class at the 1998 Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.