Jiotto Caspita

The Jiotto Caspita is a prototype mid-engine sports car designed and manufactured by Dome in 1989. The car was billed as the "F1 on the Road." The original design of the car was done by Kunihisa Ito, who was the vice president and chief designer of Jiotto Design Incorporated. Its name is derived from the Italian exclamation "caspita".

History
The Caspita was the brainchild of Wacoal president Yoshikata Tsukamoto and Dome president Minoru Hayashi. A joint venture between the two companies was formed in July 1988 by the name of Jiotto Inc. (60% held by Wacoal and 40% held by DOME) to design and build the car. The engineering was entrusted to Dome, while the newly incorporated Jiotto Design studio was tasked with designing the car.

The Caspita was displayed at the 28th Tokyo Motor Show in 1989. In light of positive reception, a limited production run of 30 units was considered, but never came to fruition. The project would die out in 1993 due to the collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble, which resulted in a lack of demand for sports cars.

The Mk. I Caspita is currently on display at the Motorcar Museum of Japan in Komatsu, whilst the Mk. II remains in possession of Dome and sits in their museum below the wind tunnel at their headquarters.

Design
The car had a sleek and aerodynamic body design inspired by Group C race cars. Design mockups of 1/5 scale were made for wind tunnel testing. Later, full-size models were made and tested at Dome's own wind tunnel as well as the JARI (Japan Automobile Research Institute) wind tunnel for aerodynamic refinement. Jiotto Design selected three design proposals out of the initially proposed 200 for final development. Out of the three, a design having an integrated rear wing and large side air intakes was fully developed.

The Mk. II Caspita was partially restyled with new twin circular taillights, circular headlights, and more traditionally styled side-view mirrors.

Powertrain
The Mk. I Caspita was built with a detuned Subaru 1235 flat-twelve engine, a Formula One engine originally built by Motori Moderni for Subaru and rated at 450 hp and 363 Nm; it could accelerate the car to 100 km/h from a standstill in 4.7 seconds. After the failure of Subaru's F1 effort, the 1235 was abandoned, leaving Jiotto without an engine supplier.

The Mk. II used a Judd GV V10 engine, with which it was capable of 585 hp at 10,500 rpm and 276 lbft of torque at 10,500 rpm. This, combined with a curb weight of between 1240 kg and 1260 kg, gave the Caspita a claimed 0-100 km/h acceleration time of 3.4 seconds.

Both engines were longitudinally mounted and coupled to a 6-speed gearbox built by Weismann.

Chassis
The Caspita had a bonded aluminium and carbon fibre monocoque chassis made by Mitsubishi Rayon Co., Ltd. The construction technique involved sandwiching aluminium between layers of carbon fibre and curing them in an autoclave to create a rigid structure. The process was repeated 15 times over a span of more than 2 months. This technique resulted in a kerb weight of 1100 kg for the Mk. I Caspita.

Accessed via two gull-wing doors, the Caspita's red-and-black interior was driver-focused and spartan in nature, with no air conditioning, cruise control, or other such driver amenities.

Like its Tokyo Motor Show contemporaries the Mitsubishi HSR-II and Isuzu 4200R, the Caspita employed advanced technology for the time, such as an electronically retractable rear wing and an electronically controlled adjustable suspension system which could raise the car by 2.3 in.