When Ian Briggs and his brother Neill were working for leading automobile manufacturers in Europe, helping them build world-class vehicles, they realized that every car on the road had trade-offs: performance or utility, safety or sleekness. What if, they wondered, they were to build a car that embodied an uncompromising, monomaniacal devotion to maximal driving thrills?
In 2009 the two Brits formed the Briggs Automotive Company (BAC) in Liverpool and set about making their perfect automobile. The result is the BAC Mono, the only single-seat supercar in the world, a vehicle that is truly one-of-a-kind.
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Sleek, low, with lines that echo the Batmobile (if the Dark Knight’s ride were restyled as a spacecraft), the Mono is hand-constructed and bespoke, much like a Savile Row suit. Almost everything about it can be personalized, from individual color schemes to the single-seat, made-to-measure cockpit with pedals, seat, and steering wheel molded to the owner’s body and hand grip. With 0 to 60 miles per hour in 2.7 seconds, the $210,000-plus supercar is as fast as it looks, and offers the closest experience to driving a Formula 1 racing car on the street.
“What differentiates Mono as a product from another car is that it has not been designed as a means of transport,” Ian Briggs says. “It’s been designed like a piece of equipment for an extreme sport.”
