Celebrated and acclaimed and yet never built - the Dome Zero
It had what it took to be a star. It proved this at the 1978 Geneva Motor Show when it was presented and stole the show from the European elite. It was called the Dome Zero and came from the small Japanese company Dome Co Ltd. Minoru Hayashi was behind the project and his aim was to build a small-series sports car to finance his racing ambitions (two starts at Le Mans, in 1981 and 1982, were not crowned with great success, however).
But first, the sports car had to be sold. The chassis was based on the racing car design of the time, with independent suspension on double wishbones all round. The weight of the vehicle was just 920 kg, so the 145 hp of the Nissan in-line six-cylinder engine, which was borrowed from the 280 ZX, was sufficient. The five-speed gearbox came from ZF.
The shape, however, was breathtaking and did not have to shy away from comparison with the most forward-looking Italian styling studies.
But there was a problem - Dome did not receive homologation for the home market of Japan. The car could not be sold there. In response, the Zero P2 was developed, which differed from the first prototype with large bumpers and a more rigid structure.
This second prototype was shown at the motor shows in Chicago and Los Angeles. Road & Track magazine was even able to drive it and reported extremely positively. The price for the P2 would have been just over 30,000 USD, but the project was eventually stopped.
The Dome Zero came to late honors in computer games, e.g. Gran Turismo 4 and 5.
The pictures can of course also be found in their original resolution in the Zwischengas archive.
