I feel confident saying that this is a race car—and a whole race series—you’ve never heard of because Turkish readers make up a pretty small percentage of our vast, remarkably attractive readership. And this race car is so Turkish that it’s the . That’s pretty Turkish. It also may be a template for a possible future city car? It’s called a Volkicar.

The Volkicar is named for and was the pet project of Volkan Isic, one of Turkey’s most accomplished rally drivers. Around 2008, Isic and a team set out to design a small race car for races in tighter urban environments and on smaller tracks, as well as being a relatively affordable way for people to get into racing, somewhat like the Volkswagen-based Formula Vee series started in the 1960s.

The Volkicar was designed in accordance with FIA rules, and the associated racing series is known as the . The racing series seems novel and fun, though I’m hesitant to try and report all the details about it because all my information is coming from machine-translated Turkish, and I’m not confident I’m getting all the details right.

Besides, at the moment I’m more interested in the novel race car developed for the series, as it’s a compelling, plucky-looking little design that seems more suited, at first glance, to be useful little city car for dense urban environments than an actual race car.

But, make no mistake, it’s a surprisingly capable race car. One surprise, based on the look of the car, is revealed in this video:

It’s rear-wheel drive! It looks like it would be some sort of transverse front-engine little box like a Scion iQ/Aston Martin Cygnet or a Japanese Kei car, but its external appearance is deceptive.

Under the fiberglass body is a tube-frame chassis, and it’s surprisingly tiny—just under 10 feet long, about the same as an original Mini. The front-mounted engine that’s driving the rear wheels through a sequential five-speed gearbox (with an electric reverse) is a Yamaha 1251cc inline-four with dual overhead cams and a quad-carburetor intake setup, an odd choice in our fuel-injected era.

I think it’s the same basic motorcycle engine as used in the, though here it appears to be liquid-cooled and makes a healthy 115 horsepower. For a car that weighs less than 1,200 pounds, that’s around 10 pounds per horse, which makes the little brute nice and zippy.

There’s (what seems to be, at least) a pretty comprehensive video review of the Volkicar, and it really looks like a blast to drive:

Pictures and videos from the V1 Challenge races definitely make these events look exciting to watch, with those short-wheelbase cars drifting around corners and occasionally around themselves:

Now, I think, but I’m not entirely certain, that there is a plan to use the general look/layout of the Volkicar as the , which I think would work very well. The space-maximizing design of the body makes a lot of sense in this context, and if they can keep a bit of those flared fenders, even better.

I suspect if that did happen, it would sort of be like the relationship of NASCAR cars to their production namesakes: only the outer shell and general look would be the same, with very different internals, such as the city car likely having a more conventional FWD drivetrain.

Sure, you’d lose the gleeful madness of the race car, but I do love the idea of a little city car getting a start from a real racing car, which I think would do a lot to dispel city-car slow penalty-box stigmas.

My lack of Turkish and a reliance on Google’s cybernetically-augmented chimps for translation is making me question some things, but I’m hoping a Turkish-speaking commenter may be able to help me get the details more clear.

One thing that isn’t lost in translation, though, is the raw joy of a tiny box with fat wheels and a hyperactive engine flinging you around corners. That shit’s universal.