Rinspeed Mono Ego – the First Single-seater Car in the World that's Licensed for the Road!

The anniversary:
To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Rinspeed Design AG company, Frank M. Rinderknecht (41) has come up with something very special: the Swiss automobile tuner has created a vehicle that blends traditional beauty and forward-looking technology in a most impressive way – the Rinspeed Mono Ego. Developed in only a year, this distinguished vehicle is his company's anniversary contribution to the Geneva Salon de l'auto, an eye-catcher that could well generate active discussion among the visitors. As the name implies. The Mono Ego is intended for men or women who are able to treat themselves to something special from time to time, and allow themselves the leisure to enjoy it. To drive the Mono Ego is to listen to the V8 engine's heartbeat, to watch the long engine hood cleave its way through the countryside – and to have no other cares whatever!

The idea:
In the words of Frank M. Rinderknecht: "For me, the Mono Ego represents a means of widening one's horizons and a fresh challenge. My goal was to satisfy the demands of the law and the principles of good design at one and the same time. I wanted the Mono Ego to be a totally exclusive car, but one entirely suitable for road use. I also intended it to stand clearly apart from the work of tuners who merely convert existing products. It is a recollection of the great racing cars of the 1950s, but also as an embodiment of state-of-the-art technology – and of course of Rinspeed's skills in these areas." Rinderknecht has a convincing explanation of the short period of time needed to develop the Mono Ego: "When the pressure's on, development results are often better than if too much agonizing goes into them!" In this case, certainly, this argument holds good.

One of the most remarkable features of Frank M. Rinderknecht's latest creation is surely the fact that the Rinspeed Mono Ego complies with valid European Union legislation and is a fully-fledged roadgoing design. "We wanted to build an exclusive car, but one that could be taken out on the roads as well as acting as a pilot project at exhibitions." This ambitious target has certainly been achieved by the Rinspeed Mono Ego – its luggage compartment can for instance easily accommodate a golf bag. What this mobile work of art is to cost, however, has yet to be finalized.

Development work:
Frank M. Rinderknecht made use of the very latest techniques in the design and development of this project, including CAD/CAM methods. The CAD/CAM Computer (which in terms of performance would not be out of place in a major automobile manufacturer's development department) processes all the details of a 1:10 scale model with such accuracy that very few changes are needed when the full-scale model is built. Rinderknecht: "By using CAD/CAM, we achieve an unequaled standard of processing quality and can also implement our ideas far faster than ever before. This naturally helped us to get the Mono Ego project rolling in such a short time."

Even seemingly minor details such as the turn-indicator and brake light holders are produced to very high standards and neatly integrated into the body. "These are items that are all to often added as afterthoughts," Rinderknecht (who is father of a five-year-old daughter) comments. "For us, the real challenge was to develop a vehicle with plenty of scope for design ideas, but with no compromises in its suitability for road use."

Story by Rinspeed Edited by Maximum-Cars.com