The 7 coolest Pikes Peak cars ever

2019 VW ID.R

Sometimes you need to start from scratch with zero link to any road car. That’s what Volkswagen did with the ID.R, a one-off prototype designed purely as an electric powertrain tech demonstrator. Of course, there are certain concessions to driver safety in its design, but beyond that, the world was their oyster. The result is what looks like an unlimited-spec LMP car. Packing 690PS from two electric motors and weighing under 1,100kg, it took wins at both Pikes Peak and here at Goodwood on the Hill, as well as setting a Nürburgring record. It’s a shame to this day that VW didn’t carry on with the ID.R programme.

1998 Toyota Tacoma

An utter great of the mad ‘90s era of Pikes Peak, the Rod Millen Toyota Tacoma is one dear to our hearts. That’s because it gave us probably one of the coolest runs we’ve ever seen on our own Goodwood Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard Hill. 

Like the Escudo, it masquerades as being related to a road car, with superficial stickers imitating the styling and features of Toyota’s small truck of the day. The reality is that it’s a bespoke race chassis with a crazy 1,000PS (735kW) 2.1-litre four-cylinder IMSA race engine. That engine is extremely boosty, and as we saw on the Hill, loves to kick out some stink while trying to buck and flex its way off the road. Just the most spectacular thing. Millen and Toyota proved to be a dominant force at the time, taking victory from 1996 to 1999 in Toyota machinery.

1995 Suzuki Escudo

If this weren’t included on a list of the coolest Pikes Peak cars, something would be seriously wrong. The Hillclimb hero of the PlayStation generation is of course the Suzuki Escudo, star of the first four Gran Turismo games. Masquerading as a version of the road car some call Vitara, the Pikes Peak Escudo shares precisely nothing but a name with the campy crossover. 

It packs two twin-turbo 2.5-litre V6 engines for a 995PS (732kW) combined output, putting that power to all four wheels via a six-speed sequential transmission. That’s all mounted within a specialist race chassis, over which crazy aero-honed bodywork, with token nods to the road car, is draped. This is a machine designed to dominate Pikes Peak in the dirt trail form it still retained in the 1990s. Of course, Suzuki has plenty of form on the Mountain, following its 1995 overall win with a further six wins, from 2006 to 2011.

2016 Honda NSX Pikes Peak

This one flies a little bit under the radar to be honest, especially in a world now full of Ford Supertrucks and Volkswagen ID.Rs. But in 2016, Honda was ahead of the game, with an all-electric, 1,000PS Honda NSX Pikes Peak challenger. Typically, while the silhouette is very NSX and the nose is very NSX, it has an absolute snowplough on the front, and a wing to make a GT3 RS feel like a GT3 Touring on the back, along with a monster diffuser.

If anything, it went a bit further in terms of powertrain than the ID.R did, with four motors as opposed to two. Of course, there will be advantages and disadvantages that both teams will have evaluated intensively. The most memorable thing about the NSX Pikes Peak EV? Well, it had a particularly curious way of announcing its approach, given there isn’t engine noise to do it. That siren is incredibly annoying and distinctive. We still love this thing, as we do the NSX road car.

2023 Ford Supervan 4.2

Fielding a truck at Pikes Peak is nothing new, is it Mr Millen? But the what about a van? That’s exactly what Ford did last year with the Supervan 4.2, a Transit with three electric motors and power just shy of a Bugatti Chiron. Consider that for Hillclimb duty, power was actually trimmed down from 2,000PS (1,471kW).

There’s a whole lot besides that made its presence on the Mountain amazing. First, it was driven by hillclimb master and Le Mans legend, Romain Dumas. Second, it had the full financial force of Ford behind its development. Third, there’s just something so incongruously glorious about a Transit being one of the fastest racing cars across ground on the planet.

We had it here at the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed, where in the Timed Shootout, the master Dumas showed us exactly what it takes to be a winner on the Hill. Threading that thing up our Hill must have been crazy enough. Imagine the speeds the still two-tonne machine saw on the way up Pikes Peak…

2023 Radford 62-2

Okay, there’s a lot of electric talk on this list, because when it comes down to it, it’s better and faster when it comes short-distance point-to-point motorsport. But that doesn’t mean some aren’t still going mad with internal combustion power. Take Radford, who commissioned the construction of an insane 700PS (515kW) version of its Lotus-based 62/2 coach build.

Resplendent in JPS-esque black and gold, it looked incredible scooping its way up the Mountain with Tanner Foust at the wheel, howling its way to a class win in 2023. An advantage of staying with supercharged 3.5-litre V6 power? The 62-2 Pikes Peak weighs less than half of what the Supervan does.

1988 Peugeot 405

We shall end with a living legend, because this is the car many will think of when you say ‘cool Pikes Peak car’. It’s the Peugeot 405. With its origins in Group B, the 405 Pikes Peak that ended up winning in 1989 was a bespoke carbon bodied, custom-chassis monster that was the result of Peugeot getting very invested in The Mountain, choosing to evolve its Grand Raid Paris-Dakar car from an endurance-ready off-road machine, to an all-out sprint screamer.

Of course, coming from the dirt track era of Pikes Peak, the 405 is very rally-spec, if the WRC had basically zero rules. Powered by a 600PS (441kW)+ 1.9-litre turbocharged four-cylinder, the 405 weighed a measly 880kg, allowing for near-on 700PS (515kW) per tonne and sent its power through all four wheels. It racked up wins in both 1988 with Ari Vatanen driving, and 1989 with Robby Unser at the wheel. Unser, of course, would go on to rack up three further wins.