Don Panoz's Prescription for Bulletproof Race Cars

Don Panoz made his fortune inventing the nicotine patch. Working out of a warehouse in an Atlanta suburb, he’s spending some of it to develop a svelte race car that could transform auto racing and make regular cars more efficient.

The DeltaWing, which looks a bit like the Batmobile, is a collaboration between several companies including Elan Motorsport Technologies, one of several companies Panoz founded in the 1990s to build components for race cars. Its design tapers at the front and features a vertical fin to reduce wind drag. Extremely thin front tires (just four inches wide) and other tweaks to standard car design help keep weight down. Most important, the body is made of a material developed by Elan called REAMS, or Recyclable Energy Absorbing Matrix System, which is a composite plastic made up of tightly woven threads of polymers including PVC, the stuff used in piping. It’s cheaper and 20 percent lighter than the carbon fiber typically used in race cars and luxury vehicles, and far sturdier. REAMS can block bullets, whereas carbon fiber shatters on impact, says Panoz.