As one would expect in a vehicle costing $575,000, the cockpit of the S7 is a PETA nightmare, awash in the finest leather and suede. That's seats, steering wheel, headliner, A-pillars, and so on. (Trust me, any cow would be proud to give its life to be a part of the S7.) The driver's seat is not adjustable, neither for fore-aft travel or seatback rake. Each car's seat and pedal assembly is custom-fitted for the owner. Since I was driving the car the same day as Road & Track's Kim Wolfkill (who stands a good head taller than me), the seat was fixed further back than I needed, but extra seat bolsters were provided to accommodate my shorter arms and legs.
One thing you won't find in the S7 is an airbag. Saleen was able to get an exemption due in part to the car's very limited production. (Some 70 street versions have been built since the debut of the naturally aspirated S7 in 2001, and there have been 11 race cars as well.) The steering wheel looks like something out of an American Le Mans racer and works just as well. To compensate some for a lack of airbag, the A-pillars and headliner are thickly padded.
Another missing staple was a rearview mirror. Thanks to the massive 7-liter engine, you'd never see anything out of the back window anyway, so Saleen discreetly mounts a camera in the rear fascia that sends its signal to the pop-out video screen from the dash-mounted Kenwood stereo. Like the entire S7 experience, it takes a second to adjust to it, but it becomes second nature after awhile. It can be a bear to read in certain light conditions, but with a top-speed thought to be in excess of 250 mph (Steve Saleen is said to have driven it 239 mph), how close can anything be anyway?
As for the Phil Frank-penned bodywork, we think it's the most compelling supercar on the planet. As great as the Ford GT is, it's an update of the original from 40 years ago. The S7's lustful shape is not an adaptation of something else. It's authentic, inventive, and radical. This beauty extends under the chassis as well, as there is "full-tray" body sculpting to improve aerodynamics and high-speed stability.
Though highly decorative, all the scoops and slats are there for a reason. For example, side scoops help to cool the transmission, while split radiators exhaust under the car and to the sides to create additional downforce. Air enters the intake tract from the scoop on the roof.
The body, doors, decklid, and so on, are all carbon fiber, while the chassis is composed of 4130 chrome-moly tubing with honeycomb composite panels. The rack-and-pinion steering is power-assisted; in fact, the rack is mounted over your legs. The hydraulic assist makes an unusual breathing noise when you turn the three-spoke wheel. Funky, but interesting. The suspension is fully independent (you were expecting an 8.8 solid-axle out back?), and there are aluminum dampers with coilover springs front and rear. This ain't no kit car, boys and girls.
Remarkably, the twice-turbo'd 427, which has its roots in Ford small-block architecture, but was completely redesigned by the engineers in Irvine, is tuned to run on everyday 91-octane premium. The twin-ball-bearing turbos feed the oval-bore throttle body without the aid of an intercooler. The intake features eight individual runners, and the canted-valve aluminum heads are CNC ported. As expected, the block, too, is aluminum. The six-speed gearbox is longitudinally mounted and feeds a 3.20:1 ratio in the differential.
Ready For Take-Off
Even though I'd recently spent a week in a Ford GT painted in the "Heritage" colors (read: Gulf Oil blue and orange), the S7-by sheer virtue of its $575,000 price tag-commanded sweaty palms. Hell, that's more money than even I make in a year. Driving shoes are a must, thanks to a tight footwell, and though the driver sits closer to the center of the car than the passenger, your legs are still angled right a bit.
Once the pushrod V-8 fires up, your adrenal glands kick into overdrive. As it settles into an 1,150-rpm idle, you're thinking, "This is the greatest exhaust note ever." It's akin to having a tiger on a short leash. I slipped the shifter into Reverse, checked the stereo for foreign objects, and backed out. As I got used to the dual-disc clutch and the size of the S7 (at nearly 188 inches long, it's essentially the same size as a new Mustang, but perhaps because the top of the roof is a mere 41 inches off the ground, the Saleen seems enormous at first), I wondered if I'd scrape anything pulling out of the driveway onto the road-4 inches of ground clearance will get you thinking about such things. No problem