Weight is the enemy of a fast car, and you can't get much lighter than Carbon Fibre. If there's nothing left to rip out or replace, how about carbon fibre wheels?
To make a car faster, the recipe is simple: Increase the power-to-weight ratio. Adding a bigger engine, or making the engine more powerful somehow works great, or you can make the car lighter. Or both. Rip out everything you don't need, an replace everything you do need with lighter bits: Replace steel with aluminium, aluminium with carbon fibre, glass with Perspex, and so on. Now, you can even make your alloy wheels a lot lighter!
This week-end, Mosler Automotive announced that the Mosler MT900S will be the very first production car to be fitted with carbon fibre wheels as standard, made by Dymag. For the Mosler, they come in 19 and 20-inch 8-spoke Magnesium hubs with carbon fibre rims. The carbon-fibre front wheels now weigh 6.3 kg, compared to the 10.9 kg aluminium alloys they replace. On the whole car, the weight reduction is an incredible 19 kg.
Performance of this calibre doesn?t come cheap, though ? retrofitting these rims will cost you £1,200 - £1,400 per wheel. Check out the Dymag website for more info
