Brabham BT62R: The Street-Legal Version of a Kick-Ass Track Car You’ve Never Heard Of

You'll need to bring plenty of money, and your location might be a hangup . . .

Sick of having to drive your Pagani or Koenigsegg to your private trackside garage every time you want to take your closed-course-only Brabham BT62 hypercar for a spin? It appears the fine folks at Brabham have read all those angry letters and frustrated tweets, and if you have a cool £1.25 million (around $1.65 million) in your couch cushions, the Australian supercar firm now offers a roadworthy version of the BT62 to make that villa-to-track schlep seamless.

This new street-legal weapon is called the BT62R, and while we did just insinuate it's the first road-ready version of the BT62, that's not exactly the full story. Despite the BT62's singular focus on shredding world-class circuits such as Silverstone and Brands Hatch like wet tissue paper, a not-insignificant portion of Brabham's customers wanted to flex their 700-hp toys in public. Brabham acquiesced and offered a £150,000 (around $200,000) package that legalized the BT62 for road use—but only in the U.K.

Now, the BT62R lets you skip all that and drive it straight from the factory gates. The original BT62 is quite literally designed as one of the most focused and aggressive track cars money can buy, so it's no surprise the laundry list of upgrades found on the BT62R extends far beyond a set of mounting brackets for license plates.

Occupants are coddled by outlandish appointments like air conditioning, upgraded seats, additional sound insulation, a heated windshield, and a quieter exhaust. To make this hyper-wedge remotely usable for a trip to the grocers, the front splitter is less aggressive, the track-only slicks are now Goodyear Eagle F1s, and there's an all-important axle lift system that allows one to ease the nose over pesky speed humps.

Brabham didn't fiddle with the BT62's naturally aspirated 5.4-liter V-8 too much, so it still makes the same 700 horsepower and 492 lb-ft of torque. And while both the engine and the six-speed sequential transmission are remapped and re-tuned to be more appropriate for road use, Brabham says once you get out of pit lane and hit a road course, driving the BT62R should provide essentially the same experience as the regular BT62. This is especially true if you opt for the Track Pack, which is a separate set of affixable splitters, wings, and aero effects that can turn your BT62R into an aerodynamic twin to the regular BT62.

The BT62R can be ordered at launch in special-edition guise, because no million-dollar hypercar worth its carbon fiber doesn't provide some pathway to additional exclusivity. This package is called the Celebration Series and commemorates each of Brabham's 35 individual Formula 1 victories throughout history, adding niceties like 18-karat gold badging and interior trim and upholstery unique to each individual car. On the outside, all Celebration Series get a livery inspired by winning Brabham F1 cars.

Sound good? If you're ready to dust off your checkbook, well, you probably should spell that as "chequebook"—the BT62R isn't going to be sold in the U.S. here due to Brabham eschewing the incredibly expensive process of federalization. Brabham hints one of its future cars might make it stateside, but in the meantime, we recommend establishing residency at an Australian ranch or an English manor in order to experience the BT62R's specific brand of madness.