1997 Panoz AIV Roadster Test Drive

In 1988 pharmaceutical company founder Donald Panoz bought the design of a racing car chassis in Ireland and started development of the Panoz Roadster, which went on the market in 1990 to embody “brute strength and raw power built for the absolute pleasure of high-speed driving,” according to the company’s promotional materials. That car, as well as its descendants—the bare-bones 1996 AIV (aluminum intensive vehicle) and the 1997 Esperante—are darty and race-car-like on the road, running on aluminum Ford V-8s. Also in 1997 Panoz began racing his cars at Le Mans. A couple years later he started the now-popular American Le Mans Series and began buying racetracks and opening driving schools. source