Leading Edge Sports Car Company was a British car company based in

Dereham Dereham (), also known as East Dereham, is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Breckland District of the England, English county of Norfolk. It is situated on the A47 road, about 15 miles (25 km) west of the city ...

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

established in June 2002. The company was dissolved in September 2005. It outsourced the manufacture of its cars to fellow Dereham company Breckland Technologies.

Leading Edge 190 RT

Leading Edge was established in 2002 by Paul Mickleburgh to market its first new car, the 190 and 240 RT in Europe and the US. The car was a lightly updated version of the

Tommykaira ZZ The Tommykaira ZZ is a mid-engined sports car manufactured by tuning company Tommykaira (トミーカイラ) in Japan. The car was conceived in late 1991, developed from 1992, unveiled in 1995 and manufactured from 1996 to 2000 in its first generati ...

, a popular car in Japan, but made in Norfolk, and it suffered from the Japanese recession and the company became bankrupt. The receivers sold the tooling and inventory to neighbouring Breckland Technology Ltd, run by ex- Lotus engineer Mark Easton, who continued to manufacture the cars and sold them on to Leading Edge to distribute from the summer of July 2002 at a price of around £26,500. The car featured a mid-mounted

Nissan , trade name, trading as Nissan Motor Corporation and often shortened to Nissan, is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automobile manufacturer headquartered in Nishi-ku, Yokohama, Japan. The company sells ...

2.0 L twin cam engine (1998cc), producing at 6900 rpm and torque of at 4900 rpm. Top speed was claimed to reach and accelerate 0-60 mph in 4.8 seconds. Its open-top body was

glassfibre Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass cloth ...

, with an extruded aluminium central tub topped and tailed by tubular metal subframes and weighed only .

Leading Edge 240 RT

The 240 RT was also launched in 2002 as a high-powered version of the previous Tommy Kaira ZZ. The 240 shared the same Nissan 2.0 L engined as the 190 RT, but with a higher output of , producing an acceleration time of 4.4 seconds to 60mph. With the addition of a hard top roof in 2004, the weight increased to 809kg.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leading Edge Sports car manufacturers Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of England Car manufacturers of the United Kingdom 2002 establishments in England British companies established in 2002 Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 2002 Companies based in Norfolk Dereham