PRAGA

Words David Lillywhite

PHOTOGRAPHY PRAGA lower yourself into the thinly padded seat. Pick up the removable steering wheel from the passenger seat and click it into place.

Butwhatifyoucouldhavethatraceabilityinaroad-legalpackage?SayhellotothePragaBohema!

Press the starter button in the center console. The engine fires noisily into life… and now you have a choice: onto the track or out onto the highway? Because this really is about as close as you can get to the cliched ‘race car for the road’.

Praga refers to the new Bohema slightly differently, perhaps conscious of political correctness – although only just. The company calls the model a “track-focused road-legal hypercar”, but of more interest is that it weighs just 2165lb, or only a fraction over a ton, and produces 720bhp. However you want to refer to the Bohema, you know it’s going to be one helluva ride – and with just 89 being built at $1.28 million each, you won’t come across many of them. (If you do want to see one, the first demonstrator will be touring the US in the Fall).

Some history here, so you can appreciate the background: Praga, named after – and based around – Prague in Eastern Europe’s Czech Republic, has its roots in a heavy-engineering company of the late 1800s. Its first cars came in 1907, initially as licensed Isotta Fraschini copies before developing its own products.

By the mid-1920s it boasted a full range, and in 1933 one of its six-cylinder Alfa models won the inaugural 1000 Miles of Czechoslovakia

‘However you refer to the Bohema, you know it’s going to be one helluva ride – and with just 89 being built, you won’t come across many of them’ road race – the country’s equivalent of Italy’s famous Mille Miglia.

Alongside the cars, Praga was also building tough, go-anywhere trucks, which became its focus from 1947, when Czechoslovakia’s new Communist government instructed the brand to leave automobile building to Skoda and Tatra. It wasn’t until the fall of Communism that Praga was able to reset its agenda, which came with its own problems after years of being state run. Eventually its new private owners introduced motocross bikes alongside the venerable trucks, then bought a kart factory, which has since grown to such an extent that Praga now makes more than 7000 chassis a year.

With an aero division as well, the firm finally went back into cars in 2012 with the V8 R4S, soon followed by the more race-focused Renault Alpine four-cylinder mid-engined R1, for which there is now the popular Praga Cup as well as eligibility in sportscar racing worldwide.

With the success of the R1 race car, the clear next step seemed to be a road-legal, trackfocused model. Praga initially tried converting the R1 to road spec, resulting in the 2016 R1R, but the team wasn’t happy with the compromises needed, and started to develop an all-new design – which we now know as the Bohema.

It’s built around a composite monocoque, designed with aerodynamics and light weight foremost in priority. Suspension is by racestyle pushrod-operated horizontal dampers, braking by carbon-ceramic discs and sixpiston calipers, and the engine is a 3.8-liter Nissan PL38DETT twin-turbo V6 unit, as used in all GT-R models ever since 2007.

Unusually, Praga is able to buy the motors new from Nissan. It ships them to renowned GT-R specialist Litchfield Engineering in the UK to be rebuilt with a dry-sump system (allowing the engine to sit lower in the car), stronger turbos and other mods that are said to unleash 720bhp at 6800rpm. It’s mounted on a separate subframe rather than directly to the monocoque, to cut down on noise and vibration, and it drives the rear wheels via a six-speed paddle-shift Hewland sequential ’box. Knowing that high quality is non-negotiable at this price, Praga has the Bohema finalassembled at WRC rally driver Roman Kresta’s obsessively neat Kresta Racing HQ, following his development work there of the R1.

It’s a great-looking car, especially in the electric blue of one of the two prototypes here. It has been designed in-house using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) and verified in a wind tunnel by Praga’s small team of engineers and designers, led by Juraj Mitro. The aim was always for the lightest weight possible, so there’s no active aero, but downforce in standard mode is over 2000lb at 155mph – and testing with Praga development driver Josef Král, and F1 and IndyCar star Romain Grosjean, revealed that a small additional blade on the existing rear wing made a significant difference to cornering grip.

The outlook from that snug, neatly trimmed cockpit is all about the near-panoramic view through the wraparound windshield, for whose wipers the Praga engineers had to come up with an ingenious solution. The side mirrors, mounted on long stalks, give a clear rear view; more than can be said of many hypercars, and crucial here because there’s no rear window.

Back to our drive. The engine’s idling and the Bohema is begging to go, but first a quick look around the cabin, which so far has surprised everyone with its high quality and inspired design touches. There are various clever pockets and storage cubbies, plus luggage areas in the exterior pods, and the trim in Alcantara and leather is to a high standard. The same goes for all the neat cast and 3D-printed metal components, such as the sprung cradle that holds a smartphone for use as a sat-nav or data-logger. Air-con controls are in a tiny roof console, and the doors are opened using an electronic button, although there is also a mechanical release in the roof in case of failure.

ABOVE AND OPPOSITE Storage areas in the sidepods come with bespoke luggage; the removable steering wheel is a leather-trimmed work of art.

The steering wheel is a minor work of art: tiny but weighty, it incorporates a central digital screen, gearshift paddles, indicator and wiper switches, and neat mode-selection dials all built in. The column adjusts but the seat is fixed, adjustable only for angle. Instead, the pedal box moves back and forwards. The steering wheel is adjustable, too, and sculpted cut-outs for the passenger’s elbows and forearms allow room for two adults in the narrow cockpit without getting in each other’s way.

How do I know? Because my first two rides in the Bohema were as a passenger, initially on bumpy British back roads, and then on the fast, technical curves of the Slovakia Ring with Romain Grosjean – and that finally brings us back to how this fascinating machine drives.

From the very start, it’s clear that this is all about raw performance. The engine idles noisily behind the cockpit, and the gearbox clunks into first, the Bohema feeling like it’s straining on a leash to get a move on.

Out onto the road, and the suspension is race-car firm but smoother than it has any right to be over the bumps, without the expected bangs or crashes through the suspension. The asphalt is narrow and the traffic is initially heavy, but the Bohema accelerates violently when there’s room, snaking a little under hard throttle on the greasy roads. The gearshifts come in without much subtlety, accompanied by plenty of transmission noise that’s then overlaid by the sharp exhaust and throaty intake soundtracks under heavy acceleration. It’s raucous but not uncomfortable, and even at speed talking normally is quite possible.

If the Bohema seems ferocious on the road, it really comes into its own on the track. Where many high-performance street cars begin to feel out of sorts on a circuit, the Bohema embraces the laps, never feeling like it’s cosseting the driver, the aero allowing everhigher cornering rates and the brakes pulling down the speed time after time without fading. Go too hot into a corner and it will naturally understeer a little, for safety, but deliberately provoke it and the tail will slide out with complete predictability. If you’ve done the GT3 thing to death, this is an obvious next step –less sophisticated, more exciting.

In the hands of pro drivers, you’d think it would begin to suffer, but even Romain Grosjean emerged after several hot laps with a huge grin on his face. “It really behaves like a race car; more like a single-seater, in fact, because there’s the aero and the downforce,” he said. “I was driving it thinking: ‘This could be a prototype, I could actually be testing to go to Le Mans.’ And then you come into the pitlane and drive it away on the road. Amazing!”

A few weeks later, Top Gear’s ‘Stig’ evaluated the Bohema for Praga, and echoed Romain’s sentiments: “Fabulous car! I am actually missing it. Overall, it’s really addictive to drive fast. I know of no other super/hypercar that you drive relentlessly, without any mercy, until you run out of fuel, and then do it again.”

Somehow the Bohema keeps on the justcivilized side of competition-car manners, despite the compromises brought about by the dedication to aerodynamics and weight saving. How long before we see one at M1 Concourse? Who knows – but it’ll be quite a sight. For more details, see www.pragaglobal.com.