THE DEVIL DRIVES PRAGA

Track car for the road, you say? Time to see if Praga's bold claim for its Bohema is fact or fiction with a roadtrip... and breaking every lap record along the way

- WORDS TOM FORD

CARS USUALLY DRIVE AROUND CORNERS. THIS ONE HUNTS THEM. LIKE PREY.

And yet it hasn’t got a four figure horsepower figure, hybrid assistance or a slew of code telling comforting lies about your own ability. Instead, it is defined more by what it hasn’t got. And what it mostly hasn’t got is weight. Or cupholders. It’s a reminder of what it feels like to drive a car rather than pilot it, to emerge scratchy with adrenaline, with a vocabulary limited to percussive swear words. It is a road legal ‘track focused hypercar’ which dances on the edge of acceptability. This is the Praga Bohema. And it is terrifyingly magnificent.

It is not, however, a very good city car. Because the perfect car for both road and track is a myth. You'll always be battered by compromise and bludgeoned by requirements. You'll always look deranged in Asda car park with a 5ft wing and canards, or nibbling your way through a rainstorm at 25mph on the latest barely there semi slick. And yet manufacturers keep trying. It’s bragging rights and ego. Has to be.

As you might have guessed just by looking at it, the Bohema does little to dispel the idea of perfect compromise. The roof is somewhere around knee level, the ‘doors’ more like flaps that unfurl from the sides of the narrow passenger cell. There’s a distinct flavour of Le Mans Prototype in the style and proportions, something expertly mixed with insectile and aerodynamic grace. It’s not traditionally pretty. But good God, does it turn heads.