As we roll away from Rossion’s headquarters, we’re on I-95, stuck behind a pack of slow-moving snowbirds in late model sedans. A Hino cube truck with two flat-brim wearing bros pulls up alongside and gives us a thumbs-up, and some kind of arcane hand signal that means “gun it”. The Rossion obliges, with the 450 horsepower V6 growling through the rev range, and the car shoots forward, the crisp pshhhhtt of the blow-off valve punctuating the up shift to 4th gear. Peak power is made from 3600 rpm until just below 5200 rpm, a fairly broad range that allows for more sedate driving in slow moving traffic, but giving you easy access to the fierce acceleration that can be tapped when the road is straight and the local law enforcement is nowhere to be seen.
There are varying degrees of fast – cars like the Honda S2000 or Lotus Elise make you giggle as they slice through the turns, screaming at the top of their lungs as you use momentum to go fast. Others, like the Nissan GT-R, induce a hearty belly laugh as you marvel at how such large, lumbering creatures can defy physics with every move. At the top of the food chain are the cars so inconceivably fast that they force even the most pious to unleash a string of expletives that would make George Carlin’s “7 words” sound like a nursery rhyme. The Q1 is more than qualified for membership into this club.
Rossion claims that the Q1 will hit 60 mph in 3.1 seconds. We were unable to independently verify these claims, but we can tell you that this car is brutally fast. The car’s 450 horsepower only has to contend with about 2,600 lbs, roughly what a new Mazda MX-5 weighs. Drop it down a gear while cruising and the car will explode forward like a Nolan Ryan fastball.
The view out the cockpit is sublime (for that very moment, at least) with the low seating position and narrow windscreen giving you the impression that you’re piloting something with a jet engine, and even the somewhat vague shifter becomes an afterthought as the V6 builds to a snarling crescendo, only to be broken up by the of the blow-off valve, which sounds like a bull exhaling through its snout.
