Think of Park Street and what comes to mind immediately? Flurys, Park Hotel and the Oxford bookstore of course, though the order may vary according to one’s preferences. Common to all three is the Paul family that owns them all. Now, get ready for a completely new area of business interest — cars.

This is largely due to a member of the same family — and we’re talking about Swraj Paul’s Caparo, founded by him in 1968. Caparo is a £650m (1bn euro) multinational company based in the UK. Caparo currently has business interests in steel and automotive components in Britain, Spain, the US, Canada as well as India. In fact, the group already has plants in India and there are plans to build 10 more, which will cater to the needs of carmakers like Honda, Maruti, General Motors and Ford.

The car that the group has already built is known as the Caparo Freestream T1. It is no ordinary car as is evident from the images, but it is not a racing car either. The T1 is a car that can be used on an everyday basis and if the owner wants, he or she can just take it to a track and try to drive the wheels off it. At least, that’s the general idea. It’s also designed to be a car that everybody can drive and also, to minimise accidents the radical shape has covered wheels to prevent one car climbing over another while still promoting wheel-to-wheel racing.

In terms of both specifications and performance, the T1 is up there with the best. Everything about the car reeks of cutting- edge technology, be it the aerodynamics or the engineering. The two-seater weighs less than 500kg thanks to technology normally found in formula car racing as well as aerospace. The engine is a Caparo V8 engine that develops close to 500bhp and that means the resultant power-to-weight ratio is a fantastic 1,000bhp-per-tonne. That makes the T1 lighter than a Caterham Super Seven, an entry-level basic sports car with phenomenal grip and handling first designed by the Lotus chief, Colin Chapman, and endows it with a power-to-weight ratio that is twice that of a Bugatti Veyron.

Moreover, the performance figures are phenomenal — a 0-60mph time of 2.5 seconds, 0-100mph time of 5 seconds and 0-100-0mph time ie accelerating from standstill to 100mph and then coming back to a full stop in less than 10 seconds. It is claimed to be almost as good as a Le Mans prototype around corners, with a braking force of 3g, which is three times the force of gravity. That’s the track part. For the ‘average kitna hai’ type, it has a 70-litre tank giving it a (claimed) range of 800km.

So how did Caparo suddenly get into cars? It was a simple two-step process. First a new advanced automotive technology and engineering design company called Caparo Vehicle Technologies (CVT) was formed. Next, Caparo acquired Freestream, an automotive consultancy established by Ben Scott-Geddes and Graham Halstead, both gentlemen being part of the engineering team that developed the fabulous British car with the German engine, the McLaren F1. In fact, the T1 had already been developed by reestream and was known as the Freestream T1 earlier. Now, it will be sold as a Caparo.

But apart from developing cars like the T1, the two are particularly skilled in matters of materials technology, having worked on the McLaren Mercedes SLR sports car. In short, they know how to marry and make the best of vastly differing qualities of totally dissimilar materials like aluminium, composites, plastics and steel. This knowledge is important to manufacturers who are eternally on the lookout to reduce the weight of a car while making it safer and consume less fuel at the same time.

On the engine side, CVT brought in a head of computer-aided engineering from the well-known engine consultancy firm, Ricardo. Thus, CVT will now provide various services like advanced technology development, materials engineering and design to anybody who needs them namely automotive, motorsport and aerospace companies. The Caparo T1 is actually CVT’s way of telling the car world that it has the ability to design and manufacture what it calls the world’s first 1,000bhp-per-tonne road and track car, with performance almost akin to that of a Formula One car.

Well, to tell the truth, the Caparo Freestream T1 is not really happening in India right now, but don’t forget CVT is a company that has connections with India. So is there a chance of the T1 coming to India? Well, stranger things have been known to happen, so one can only keep the fingers crossed.