When I first began researching potential cars for SEGA Rally back in late 2005, one area that I always thought would be successful for car content was Hill Climb events. These international events are where entrants compete against the clock to complete an uphill course. Many events are based on winding tarmac surfaces, but courses like the infamous Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in Colorado are a 12.4 mile rough cut gravel surface, that winds up the side of Pikes Peak to a height of 14,100 feet.

Many cars entering these fearsome contests are bespoke home made purpose built machines or very heavily developed factory customizations. We decided that SEGA Rally should have its own Pikes Peak Racer, so after a bit of research I discovered that the Open Car class entrants used what looked like off-road Formula 1 cars.

These vary a lot between competitors due to them being entirely hand-built specifically for the purpose of this event, so I also had to design our car from scratch. Fortunately I had just completed the Baja Dune Buggy, and I had built that car around a tubular space frame (exactly the same build process used on Open Pikes Peak Racers). So I stripped the Buggy of all external body parts, lights, spare wheel etc and then set about re-profiling the overall scale and space frame shape. The Buggy is also a 2 seater so I had to reduce and completely re-design the cockpit space (Open Racers are single seaters).

Once I had correctly proportioned the main frame I set about re-working the suspension and open wheel style front and rear wheels/tyres. The final task was to build the lightweight body panels and front and rear spoilers; these were the cherry on the cake as all Pikes Peak Racers need excessive front and rear wings to create the necessary down force required.

So what you see is the final result, I think it looks bonkers and quite unlike anything else in SEGA Rally (nothing like the original Buggy model anyway!) In-game the Pikes Peak Racer is insanely fast, possibly one of the fastest cars in the game. The power-to-weight balance is crazy as the car doesn’t weigh anything but has massive amounts of BHP. The thing to bear in mind when racing this car is that corners come up very quickly and you’ll need to be very handy with the brakes.

As this is an in-house designed car, we had complete freedom over the livery design and colour way. We chose to use the Vision Racer as the main sponsor as it fitted in with the general feel of this car; the colours of the logos are strong enough to be visible on the minimal bodywork and extreme angles and shapes. Vision Racer also supply us with the high tech driving seat-ware that we use to display SEGA Rally on at shows and press events, so the space frame basis of the Pike Peak Racer kind of fits in with the space frame technology of the Vision Racer simulations hardware.

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