The BAC Mono Is a Crazy $250,000 Street-Legal Race Car

this is a 2015 BAC mono and it's probably the closest thing you can get to a true street-legal race car I recently reviewed an Ariel Atom and that gets you pretty close but this is even closer even more ridiculous and absurd and today I'm going to review it I've borrowed this BAC mono from a viewer here in the San Diego area who has his own YouTube channel called Tom's garage it's a rather small channel but you should check it out because it has some pretty good content considering that the owner of this car also has a Porsche Carrera GT a Ford GT and a Ferrari 512 TR you can check out Tom's garage by clicking the link in the description below so let's talk mano first of all yes this is street-legal as hard as that may be to believe it's built by a company called BAC which stands for Briggs automotive company which is based in the UK and it's called the mano because it has a single seat this thing is incredibly lightweight it's only 1400 pounds which makes it about a quarter of the weight of a bmw x5 then again that makes sense when you look at it because frankly it looks like about a quarter of a bmw x5 but it's not one quarter of the performance this thing uses a 2.3 liter four-cylinder that's based on a Ford engine but then heavily modified by engineering company Cosworth the result is about 285 horsepower and about 210 pound feet of torque which don't sound like huge numbers but remember 1400 pounds that means this thing will do 0 to 60 in 2.8 seconds and it'll hit a top speed of a hundred and seventy miles an hour if you're brave enough one of the other things I absolutely love about this car is that it's molded to fit the owner you're measured and the seat is carefully sculpted in the cabin so that it is a perfect snug fit for the person who owns the car then again it had better be considering these cost around two hundred and fifty thousand dollars here in the United States and today I'm going to fit or at least I'm going to try but first I'm going to take you on a tour of the mono and show you all of its interesting quirks and features then I'm gonna get it out on the road and drive it and then I'm going to give it a dug score and four more of my thoughts on the BAC mono click the link below to visit autotrader.com slash oversteer alright I'm gonna start the quirks and features of the BAC mono with one of my very favorite quirks and that would be moving the car around short distances getting in the car is a bit of a process which I'll cover in a second so if you want to for instance pull it out of your garage before you climb inside the way you do that is you just pull it and it just moves it is not very heavy and it'll just move wherever you pull it now the owner of this car told me this is actually how he takes it out of his garage every day he just grabs on and pulls it a little bit it's easier than climbing in and going through the whole thing you can't do that in your Toyota Camry but anyway once you've pulled or pushed your BAC mono into the position where you want it it is time to climb inside which is made easy by the fact that there are no doors and no roof and also there is no key to this car although that's not really a problem for theft because well first off thieves are unlikely to ever encounter one of these but also the starting procedure is a little bit complicated so let's talk about that starting procedure and it starts with simply getting inside the mono now the first thing you want to do before you even get in is take out everything that's important from your pockets because once you're sitting down you will have no access to your pockets it is very snug in there so you take out your phone for example and there's this little storage pocket to the left of the seat where you can stick your phone that's what it's for you put it there and then that's your interior storage now there's also one of those storage pockets to the right of the seat and it contains the owner's manual this is the owner's manual it is appropriately small and lightweight and it's a USB so you have to plug it into your computer to do anything with it so if you're driving around on your mono and you're confused you can't figure out how to adjust something well too bad unless you have your laptop with you but anyway the next thing you do to get into the mono after you've emptied your pockets is you remove the steering wheel now it removes like most cars that have removable steering wheels which isn't really that Minnie there's this little gold lever in the back you pull it towards you and then you can pull the steering wheel right off now interestingly there's this little Alcantara panel in front of the cockpit that was designed for you to have a place to put the steering wheel temporarily when you've removed it there's nowhere else you can stick it but if you put it there then it's out of the way and you can more easily climb into the interior of the mono anyway with the steering wheel off then it's time to start actually climbing into the car but before you do that you have to make sure that the seat belts are not kind of sitting in the interior or else you will sit on them and then you'll never be able to get them above you so you can actually buckle them in so there's this little technique where you can kind of loop the belt through itself and place it on the outside of the car and that way you're certain that you don't scratch or damage the car as the belts are sitting there but then the belts are out of your way and it is time to actually climb into the mono so you get as close as you can and you stand on the seat and then you just kind of when yourself on in there of course this car was built perfectly to the owners size and specification so if you're not about his size you won't fit fortunately I am and so this works pretty well now once you've sat down in the mono the getting in procedure is not complete not even really all that close the next thing you have to do is put on your helmet this car does not have a windshield and so you really want something in front of your face so if you hit bugs or whatever they don't just smash into your face your eyes your nose once the helmet is on then you can put on the seat belt and it is a five-point kind of racing style harness they all clip together in the middle if you've ever been in a race car you're fairly familiar with this belt not all that unusual and then your final activity once you've sat down in the mono is getting this steering wheel back on this is a fairly simple procedure it goes on about the same way it came off you kind of pull in that gold tab in the back and you have to line it up properly so that the pins connect for the electronics in the steering wheel and then it just slides right back on and then you're in and you're ready to go except you're not really ready because we still need to figure out how to turn on the mono which is especially challenging considering that there is no teeth and so it's not particularly intuitive so here's the process over to the left of the steering wheel you have two red buttons both unlabeled the top button is the master power switch for the car you press that and it kind of wakes the car up and it gets the car ready to be turned on now the interesting thing is that the red button below that activates the fire suppression system which uses a Halon gas in order to extinguish any fire that's going on so you have the power switch and the fire gas shooter switch right next to each other same size unlabeled fortunately the fire switch is kind of in this little casing you wouldn't really accidentally press it if you knew what you were doing you don't want to give this car to someone who doesn't know what they're doing but anyway once you've pressed that master power switch the next thing to press is the button in the middle of the steering wheel it has the M logo for mono and it says power you push that once and it turns on a fuel pump and various other systems you push it a second time and then the engine is started and then you are ready to go in the bottom now once you turn the car on one of the interesting things is that you can remove the steering wheel you can do this while the car is running so even though the button to turn on the car is on the steering wheel when you pull off the wheel that doesn't turn off the car so you could just be driving around pull off the steering wheel and continue going I'll be at in a straight line but anyway let's talk about the steering wheel because it is unquestionably the most important component of the interior of the car and not just because it steers it but also because it contains all of your information and your controls we'll start with the screen on the steering wheel now the screen provides you with two different modes you can have Road mode or if you push this button it goes into race mode if you're in race mode it emphasizes the gear a little bit more and it takes away the speedometer since you don't really care what speed you're going on the racetrack now regardless of which mode you're in you will always see four gauges that allow you to monitor various pieces of the car you have oil pressure and oil temperature over on the left and over on the right you have engine temperature and air temperature kind of allows you to see what's going on and they're directly in your line of sight now beyond those gauges the screen also provides you with other useful information you have the kilometre at the top and you can see as you rev the engine the tachometer sort of expands and tells you what your engine speed is at the bottom you have the fuel gauge which tells you exactly how much fuel you haven't the tank that one is pretty obvious one other useful thing that the screen does right when you turn on the car it says a mono one of a kind that is certainly true but obviously the steering wheel has more functions than just that display screen you can see there are quite a few buttons on the steering wheel so we'll go through them one of them is the horn you press this button and then the horn sounds and in case you want to know what the horn sounds like in a BAC mono well now next up on this steering wheel you have six different buttons that allow you to control various lighting aspects on the outside of this car this little black button to the left turns on the headlights and you have two different stages you press it once and it turns on the parking lights you press it a second time and it turns on to full headlights then in the upper left you have another button that allows you to turn on the brights in case you want your high beams to go on if you're driving your mono in a low lit situation like maybe a dark or foggy racetrack now speaking of fog at the bottom left of the steering wheel you have this white button that turns on the rear fog light which will light up and let other drivers know that you're there in incredibly foggy conditions now beyond those lighting items you can also use your steering wheel to turn on the turn signals yes this race car looking a single-seater crazy no windshield thing has turn signals you have these buttons to the left and the right the yellow ones they turn on the turn signal and they don't cancel so when you go around a corner the turn signal will stay on as it turns out when you press that button the signal will flash 20 times and then automatically cancel so that you don't accidentally forget that your turn signal is on and leave it on which is a pretty good idea you also have in the bottom right of the steering wheel the hazard light button you can press that and turn on the hazard light so there are a lot of different lighting and turn signal control on that steering wheel but the most important function of the steering wheel is the fact that it allows you to get the car into gear although you can't do that with the steering wheel alone this is an unusual one this car has paddle shifters but it also has a clutch pedal now when you turn on the car it's in neutral and in order to get it into first gear you have to push the clutch in press the end button on the steering wheel and press the right pedal to upshift and then it goes into first but now that you're in first you cannot take your foot off of the clutch pedal you have to leave it on because otherwise it will die just like a manual transmission car and when you're driving around you have to use the clutch pedal if you want to shift gears which is kind of a crazy experience using a clutch pedal to shift with a paddle shifter I'm very curious how I'm gonna feel about this what I drive this thing later it seems like very counterintuitive and strange but the owner tells me eventually you do get used to it and by the way it's the same thing if you want to shift into reverse you're in neutral you have to push in the clutch and then pull the left paddle downshift and only then will it go into reverse and again you have to leave the clutch in when it's in reverse or else the car will stall just like a manual transmission car and by the way one other interesting thing about shifting the gears with the clutch pedal and the paddles you only have to push the clutch pedal in to shift below 4000 rpm this car has something called straight cut gears and although I won't get into the technical aspect basically what it means is above 4000 rpm you can just shift in the car will kind of jam itself into gear without the need for the clutch pedal so it depends on basically how fast the engine speed is whether or not you have to use the clutch which to me kind of only adds to the confusion but again the owner says you get used to it now next up in the interior moving on from the steering wheel there's not really all that much to talk about because it's a very very small and simple interior but there are a few other items worth noting in here for one to the right of the steering wheel you have a little dial that allows you to adjust the brake bias front or rear obviously this is the kind of thing you would only touch if you're like a professional who really can dial this car into exactly how you want it the owner tells me he's never really touched it before you also have near the brake bias dial the parking brake which you can use if you want or if you're on a flat surface you don't have to use it and then you can pull and push your motto as you wish and finally the last item worth mentioning you can see the mono has these mirrors on these posts that kind of stick out as you might imagine these are not power mirrors if you want to adjust them you have to manually kind of grab me with your hand and move them into position not really all that difficult though since you can easily reach it from the interior and next up I'm gonna move outside the mono and go over some of its exterior crooks and features I want to start underneath the mono if you look underneath the mono you can see that it has wood down there there's a piece of plywood that basically runs the entire length of the car so what's this about well if you drive this thing on the racetrack and you're going hard and you pick up a rock or a piece of debris or whatever and it scrapes underneath the car it's a lot easier to replace a piece of plywood than it is to replace like some big carbon fiber tray that some cars would have and so this futuristic crazy-looking race car thing has plywood underneath it who would have ever guessed our next interesting item with the mono comes in the front even though this car looks like it has this big panel that goes across the entire front end it's actually deceptive you have the wheels at the corners and then this middle bit but in between it's open and you can see as you look down here that there's actually a giant hole in the front of the mono on both sides and if you look into the hole you can even see there's like little wings like an airplane now the reason for the hole and the wings is that air is intended to pass through here and those wings kind of direct it right into the middle of the car and that air is intended to cool it and if you had physical pieces in place here air would have a lot harder time getting to where it needs to go to cool the mono and next up probably the most interesting thing in the front of this car is that this crazy single-seat race car looking thing has a trunk a cargo area in order to get to it you press on this little tab in the front if it's unlocked which it is and then like a latch pops up and then you just open up this panel and you're in and then you can store your cargo here now one issue is that this panel doesn't have a prop and it doesn't automatically stay open so instead this particular prop has been owner added in order to keep it up so you can take your stuff in or out of the monos cargo area now the cargo area isn't only that lower piece although that's the largest part of the cargo area you also have this upper bit which you can use to store even more cargo if you want one interesting thing about that upper piece though is you can remove it and if you remove it that's where your legs go when you're sitting in the cockpit so you take that off and you can adjust the pedals if you want the placement of them next up a couple of other interesting things under here one is that you can see you can turn this red dial that is the adjustable suspension damper for this car again if you're like a professional crazy track-focused person you might want to dial it make it a little stiffer or a little bit less stiff depending on the particular track of the setup you're running and so you can just very easily do that right there now also in this cargo compartment you can see there are three fluid reservoirs up here you have two for brake fluid and you have one for clutch fluid and you can monitor and add as necessary now speaking of fluids there's one other rather interesting item to mention up here in the front compartment and it's in this little pouch this pouch has a little spot where it goes in the cargo area you take it out and you can see that it has these two little like silver skewers with the M mono logo on it so what exactly are these things well it turns out they're dip sticks they come with the car perfectly tailored for the exact size in order to check your engine oil and your transmission fluid and so you use those little mono skewer dipstick things to do exactly that and that is where they live in the cargo compartment know as for actually checking that stuff accessing it is incredibly easy you go to the back of the car where the engine is you can pull off this little silver cap and that is how you check your engine oil you go further back there's a little black cap and that is how you check your transmission fluid this is one of the very few street-legal cars maybe the only one I can think of where you don't even have to open anything in order to check the oil and various other fluids it's all just sitting right there for you to do it but servicing this car isn't always quite so easy even though you can check the oil right here and that's also where you add oil in order to change the oil filter the body of the car has to come off which is not really something you're going to be doing in your garage it's a rather involved process in fact the owner tells me the body has to come off for a lot of engine repairs and a lot of access and even some maintenance and so it's not exactly the easiest thing to work on but you do have a lot of access to some pieces back here and next up a few other interesting items around back one is the third brake light the regular brake lights in back are fairly standard they're little circles very tiny about as big as they have to be for regulation since they're trying to save as much weight as possible but the third brake light is this regular car brake light except it's mounted vertically I really wonder if this is shared with any other vehicles it looks just like a regular third brake light you'd find mounted on a back window but here it is mounted vertically on this like pillar in the BAC mono and next up speaking of that piece in the mono where the third brake light is it also contains the fuel door and something I absolutely love about this car is the fuel door has a lock in order to open it you have to stick a key and turn it and then you can access the fuel I think that's hilarious because this car has no doors no roof you don't even need a key to start it but you do need a key in order to get into the fuel door to prevent someone from messing with your fuel and next up one of my very favorite things about the mono is the fact that it has pneumatic shifting basically what this means is when you go to shift gears it's not like a wire root something bringing it into the next gear instead it's air the car actually shoots air very very fast from a compressor and that sends you into the next gear the owner of this car compared it to a nail gun which also uses air to jam nails into whatever you're using it for it's the same thing here it uses air to slamming in to each additional year very unusual on cars apparently it's a little bit more common in motorcycles but either way I'm incredibly interested to see how that feels when you're behind the wheel all right it is time for me to go drive the motto but before I do that I want to talk to the owner of this car Tom of Tom's garage so Tom the first question I think on everybody's mind is are you crazy crazy I've got them I've got the vehicle yes the vehicle for crazy people so you drive this on the street yes I Drive it on the street I'll I'll take it to lunch maybe twice a week three times a week just around you just around town yeah I Drive at the lunch and then I'll even take it to Home Depot you're aware that it doesn't have a windshield yeah that's why I wear helmet so you wear helmet every time you drive it oh yeah do you ever just wear like sunglasses or whatever no helmet every time yeah because you know I've hit be swarming and they've just gone that is you're okay um how many miles do you live 7,500 miles which is a ton I mean for a car like this it's people are gonna be oh I doesn't ever drive it more but for a single-seater impractical that's insane probably the highest mileage oh yeah I think I have that's what the dealers told me that I probably have the highest mileage car that they've ever built yeah well yeah so what happens when people drive first off does anyone know what it is ever some people know from like top gear and things like that people in the know no right but it's quite inspiring I like driving because it really inspires people especially kids yeah you know they just root the kids really dig it yeah yeah well what do people say when you take it out yeah they think it's they think it's a race car and they you know they stand around and watch me get in and pseudo you know you have to go through a whole procedure right you get in you know you got your helmet on you put your noise-cancelling your buds in right right glasses on you got to put your belts on so it takes me like you know five minutes eight minutes to get I'll just get right right all standing around hovering around the cameras right do you track it do you take I track I'm a member of Spring Mountain Raceway up and prompt in Nevada how awful a so it's all often you hop in you get it up there maybe once once or twice a year I have other cars that I take up there and you have a trailer on a truck so you don't have a trailer in a trailer you don't drive it up to prom have you ever driven house the farthest you're oh I think I think the most I've driven is made in our it's it's it's very comfortable to drive but the comforts not really it's the vibration and their likes yeah that's really the deal have you ever had any incidents it's solo you below the mirrors I imagine a lot of people's cars you've never had people try to change lanes India or hate Nazi you boy when you when you drive this on the freeway or whatever you have to have to drive like you're you're on a motorcycle right you never you never in anybody's blind spot every fast for very long I mean and you're always able to get it out so I either drive in the fast lane where I've got it out or I got the strive in the slow lane where I've got it out right over the curb so right but I've never had anybody you know almost close call or anything what has been the ownership experience like in terms of reliability when I first got it had some bugs yeah what did you buy a new back in 15 yes I did okay you know I waited two years to get it you know I saw it on top gear yeah and once I saw it on top gear I was hooked yeah I'm going because I've always loved I've loved the form of the cars of the 60s yeah yeah bit cars and this is the only way you can drive one on looks like that actually yeah so but but so there's some bugs early on yeah and then I you know I work we worked through it and it's been very reliable I drive at three three four times a week pulled it out of my garage and go lunch - um woody how do you service it there's a service place out Temecula that they actually built these cars originally in the US so you're benefited by being here in Southern California specifically like in San Diego County and yeah yeah when I found out that a distribution point in Southern California that was only 45 minutes away that's a year yeah you know this I'm gonna have to get this car right if we were in Chicago or something there might be a little bit of a more difficult situation all right well I'm gonna go drive it are you nervous no I am a Hellcat okay driving the mono now I'm wearing these sunglasses for obvious reasons I think this is crazy a lot of people say that such-and-such car feels like a go-kart it's almost cute this feels like a go-kart for the road [Music] insanely loud not believable players from right behind you and one crazy thing is because it's a sequential transmission you got to go down the gears one by one so when you come to a stoplight you have to go down to first yourself it's so intense it's so intense but I think I really like that that it's so cool I don't know that I would have driven it 7,500 miles but I could totally see driving this thing casually it's just cool there's nothing else like this I just drilled the atom it's nowhere near this insane far more hardcore sitting in the middle is totally insane with no second seat they'll windshield insane the night oh my god the wind is so excessive you just absolutely and deeply need a helmet to drive this thing it's unreal but I gotta say it's so much fun it's such a blast [Music] it's so intense I've never driven a car before that's this utterly catastrophic ly intense it is so so insane it's so loud it's so everything is coming at you it's incredibly fast I would never own this car in a million years and so that's the BAC mono this is probably the closest you will ever get to a race car for the road and while two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is insanely expensive for any car let alone something is lightweight and stripped-down as this it is the perfect car if you're looking for a race car you can also take to the grocery store of course you aren't looking for that nobody is except for the small handful of people who actually have one of these but anyway now it's time to give the mono a dug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the mono looks cool special but not necessarily beautiful it's head-turning enough then it gets a 7 out of 10 acceleration to 0 to 60 in 2.8 seconds and it gets a 10 out of 10 handling is absolutely amazing and it gets a 10 out of 10 fun factor is huge it's one of the most fun cars I've ever driven and it gets a 10 out of 10 finally cool factor and it's very cool though I think the fact that many people don't know exactly what it is just that it's something bumps it down a bit and it gets a 9 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 46 out of 50 next up are the daily categories and features it has basically nothing virtually no luxuries and it gets a 1 out of 10 comfort is essentially non-existent and it gets a 1 out of 10 quality is pretty good the cars owner reports that it's been mostly reliable and it feels surprisingly sturdy and well built it gets a 7 out of 10 practicality is also basically non-existent and it gets a 1 out of 10 finally value and this is a tough one because there's literally nothing else on the planet quite like this car so who knows what it's worth it's a race car experience for the road unlike any other and yet $250,000 is big money it gets a 6 out of 10 but this is a hard one to assign anyway that gives it a total daily score of 16 out of 50 add it up in the dug score is 62 out of 100 and here's where it stands against other crazy track focused cars the motto beats out the Ariel Atom but it loses to actual vehicles with you know interiors and windshields however the motto has almost the best weekend score of them all the motto is a very focused vehicle for a very specific buyer and it certainly doesn't work for everyone for some people however it's the ultimate dream car [Music] you

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 3,801,008

Rating: 4.8792334 out of 5

Keywords: bac mono, mono, bac mono review, bac review, bac mono one, bac mono car, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: cFBMKk_tnp0

Length: 30min 11sec (1811 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 31 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Maximilianne]

BAC should sell a special lightweight performance package that lowers the weight of the car, but the surprise is they just hire a trainer and dietician for you

[u/Bumpi_Boi]

I had an incident with a hellcat

• Doug

Great quote.

[u/imped4now]

When the Miata is your big, heavy, practical car.

[u/tomgabriele]

For anyone else curious like me:

General Engine Management Systems Ltd. (c) 2013

LDS4 Boot Loader 07v03

Self test - passed

Booting application. If boot fails,

connect USB and restart device.

[u/LoveSkanks]

FYI Doug you forgot the link to Tom's Garage channel in the description. And its not easy to find.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClqlaw57fZ4xm9qp8k0MLzw

[u/mind_blowwer]

I didn't watch the whole thing as I'm at work, but I find it funny that the owner states he never drives it without a helmet and then Doug proceeds to drive it without a helmet with his mouth open.

Did he address this in the video?

[u/re_furr]

When you fit right in

[u/APimpAndHisTurtle]

Fast forward to 27:20 and watch Doug welcome all the bugs into his mouth 😂

[u/5stacksthendunk]

https://i.imgur.com/rGyX5rW.png