The MOST EXTREME Car to EVER Visit The Shmuseum!

It is safe to say that this is the most extreme hypercar that has ever been here at the Shmuseum. Today I'm bringing you along for my drive in the Praga Bohemia. Now I've been out in the Bohemia before at the Slovakia Ring, in fact a ride along with Romain Grosjean as well, and I drove it on the road, but today we're here in the UK. We're going to go down some familiar roads because this looks like something that's come straight off a race circuit, but you will notice it also has a number plate. It is a car that you can drive on the road. Not only can you just drive it on the road, but it also has quite a decent amount of luggage space, so I think it would be only the right thing to do to swing past the supermarket and go and do a little bit of shopping while we're out on the roads with it. We're going to have a quick walk around to go through the details, introduce what the Praga Bohemia is all about, and then it's going to be time to get out there to go drive it, to drive on some familiar, slightly difficult tarmac, and see what this is actually like. Hi guys, I'm Shmee, hello, and welcome back to the channel, and welcome today to the most extreme thing that's ever been here at the Shmuseum. A quick intro to what this is about. The Praga Bohemia, named after the Bohemia region in Czechia. Of course, Praga are from Prague. There are going to be 89 of these made in total, and it's very much a car that has its roots dating all the way back to 1907 when Praga were founded. They made cars, trucks, and all sorts of things before the factory was destroyed in 1947. Fast forward though to what we know of Praga in more recent times, and that's about cars suited to the racetrack, but not only can the Bohemia go at GT3 level lap times, but as we're about to find out, you can also take it to the supermarket, and I want to show you a bit more about the luggage in a moment. So Praga toyed the idea of a road car a few years ago. It was 18 months ago though that I took a first look at Bohemia when it was introduced in late 2022. We're talking a car that has a carbon fibre tub, carbon fibre bodywork, is heavily about the aerodynamics, has an engine in a loose partnership with Nismo, so the 3.8 litre twin turbo V6 making over 700 horsepower, in a car that weighs under a thousand kilos. That projected power to weight is not exactly bad. Of course, when you look at it, there's a lot going on, and we will dive into more of this. In fact, I want to come and show you as well the interior. So press the button just here, pop open the doors, because we're getting more and more accustomed to very extreme cars, the likes of the Valkyrie for example, and this is again your teardrop cabin with everything fitted inside. You can move the pedal box, adjust all the components in there, but what perhaps makes this a little bit more unique than the others is what you have on either side of it. If I press the button right inside here, and I can pop open the side compartment, this is where you have your storage space, the same on both sides of the car. In fact, if I pull this out, this is a 50 litre suitcase. Now for some perspective, if you take a trolley bag on an aeroplane, that's about 40 litres, so even more space on either side of this. And if I open this up to show you what's inside, because this is quite fun as well, we've got these little poppers to release, and I can show you what's inside here, because they've very much demonstrated the point you can take your helmet, your race gear, and stick it just in one side of the car, get to the racetrack, or go put whatever else you might like in there. Now you'll notice the car's sitting in its slightly higher ride position. This is with 110 millimetres of ground clearance, of course you can lower it down another 20 at the front, 10 at the back, and that's pretty easy to do. You just come around here and adjust the suspension components that you have down in the front. But another thing you might be wondering about is the plate, because of course having a plate at the front is a legal requirement to have a homologated road car, but on the track it's less than ideal because of its impact on the cooling for all the radiators at the front, and also the airflow. But Prager have made a really cool solution to this with a bespoke plate bracket that's new since the last time I drove it, and you release this on either side, pop it down, and then it basically just slides out to the front, if I can do this correctly, just like that, and you have this full carbon fibre contraption with the arms to hold it in place, the tubes, and the carbon fibre plate bracket on the back, and then you have your car even more at home for the racetrack. I love the engineering that goes into something kind of like that. You will see this panel over the engine bay, this is also new since the last time I took a look at the car, open this up and look at the way this mechanism cleverly hinges it underneath the rear wing. That is really quite smooth, it has to be said, revealing of course what we've got back here, around 700 horsepower, just shy of 800 newton meters of torque, with the six-speed Hewland gearbox, but now with an automated clutch. We'll talk more about that when driving it, but of course great for access, great for visibility, and great to take a look at. You've got the exposed carbon fibre of the underside of the engine cover, the roof snorkel sitting up top high in the air, and a new frame and mount here actually with the carbon fibre shaft that holds it in place. But for example, things that had to be worked on for this, the homologated requirement to have a double latch on here for the doors, along with various other components, they had to engineer these to make them the tiniest possible parts to be able to fit into a very small physical space that you have within the car. Obviously there's a lot of that as you go around it and there's going to be a lot to show you, but to step inside I think I probably need to stand back and see if I can make this work. A little bit of a cheat given I have done this before, but the first thing is to remove the steering wheel. In the case of this car it is tethered, but that's just for some testing. It won't be for the customer cars. Pop that up on the dashboard. Then the way that you do this is effectively swing a leg over, sit out on the side, you've got some specific places to put your feet, and then just kind of sink yourself in. Just slide on down, kind of like that. Nice and easy, and nice and snug, and ready to show you a bit more of what we've got inside here. I've got the steering wheel back in place. Well this is the view from inside the Praga Bohemia. Of course it's quite a snug cabin. This is where you would then reach out. You've got the grab handles up here to pull the door down towards you, but the view outside is striking, particularly those mirror arms that come out from the carbon fibre tub, and the view that you have into the exposed front arches for the wheels as well. Now looking around, of course it's a small cabin, but the seats are actually really quite comfortable. The way they are permanently part of the tub, but well engineered to make sure that you have as much space between you and the passenger as actually possible inside here. Now to start it, the controls are up on the top. So this is ignition, one press there to wake things up. You've got this new panel here as well, which at the moment is for controlling your climate control with the buttons. You could rotate this through a series of different displays, cycle through your trip information, service information, and of course get all the way back around to the menu to go into different systems and settings. So you can run through all of these, set things up as you like to have them. You've got ABS, TC for example, all available inside there as well, or go back to the climate control screen. We've got a lot to go through on the system, but most of this will come about while I'm driving and experiencing it. But one thing I quite like is what you have right here, which is rather than trying to develop a navigation system, which to be honest is quite a difficult thing to do, they have just installed a simple device where you can put your phone and use Waze, use whichever system you like, and to be honest that is really quite nicely done and well made. You've got the buttons for the doors, for adjusting the mirrors, on the steering wheel you have your indicators, horn, and a few different screens and pages, a couple other controls through the centre. But basically you're lying with your ankles about at the same height as your hips, really quite far leaning back, but really quite comfortable inside as well. Pull this down and it's a gentle then pull to latch that into place, and I'll tell you what, this feels pretty serious and ready for us to start it and head out. These smokes, what can I say? This thing is wild! Now having driven it before of course on the tarmac of a race circuit, the ride isn't so much of a topic of discussion, but I've come down a bunch of very rough English countryside B roads, the kind of stuff that really upsets any particularly farm car, and I've actually been very pleasantly surprised by how this drives. Not only that, but also the improvements to the gearbox. It's the 6-speed Newland sequential, but there have been some big software changes. The car I drove before had a clutch pedal as a prototype version, whereas this is automated and it's very smooth and actually quite easy to drive. When you come to a standstill you pop it into neutral, but it's much smoother and much easier to drive than I expected, while still giving you that clunk, that feeling of a race car. This feels on the road like something from another planet. This is the most alien thing I think I've ever driven down these kinds of lanes, not only in terms of how it looks, but in terms of how it feels, in terms of what it's actually like sitting inside here. Of course it's loud, it's not deafeningly loud, but it's loud in a race car kind of way. There's a lot of stuff happening, there are a lot of noises of the road that you're listening to. With the positioning of the brake pedal, you can go for it either left foot or right foot. I'm feeling that Formula One car style left and right vibe at the moment. Josh, as you feel the power delivering and the turbos kicking in, I mean at this stage I've gone quite gently, we'll amp it up a little bit slightly later into the drive. The seating position takes a tiny bit of getting used to, because you're slightly positioned in towards the nose. That's obviously to help with the airflow through the car from the nose cone, but you've got to get used to a slightly offset position. And I tell you what, that's quite normal if you're used to the world of race cars. Absolutely insane. What I'm driving right now is not normal. This thing is literally wild. It's crazy. It's completely different to anything else that, like I say, I've piloted down here. And I remember the day that I first drove the TSRS was in fact this exact route, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to come here, just to put the car a little bit through its paces and just to drive it and just to get a sense of what this is like. And I mean as we're following a van ahead, obviously slowing it down a touch, just looking around, you're sat quite centrally into the middle of the car, which means there's a lot of it to the left of you. And I'm used to that from the Ford GT, which is a very similar type of shape, but it does mean you find yourself wondering where that left edge actually sits, where it's positioned. You're exceptionally low to the ground. The seating position down here, I feel like I'm basically on the tarmac. It doesn't quite make sense, but yet I've got such a good view over the front scuttle out in front of me. This squared steering wheel means that I can see straight out over the front. The wheels are super easy to position from the arches that sit quite high prominently, so you've got a great idea of where exactly they are as well. And you just know that anybody else who's seeing this thing driving is looking at it like, what on earth is that? What am I actually looking at right now? And I tell you what, this is absolutely, absolutely bonkers. This is a mad car to be driving. Of course, at slower speeds, you just need to be a little bit more, to be honest, assertive with your inputs. You either need to be on the throttle or on the brake. If you're umming and ahhing, that's where it's always going to be a little bit funny. I mean, any high performance car is, any car that's seriously running towards the limit. But as we cruise through here and I just look around me, it feels like a tiny space. And I tell you what's also interesting, with no rear view mirror, the view that I have in the side mirrors is actually almost a little bit under the wing behind me. So I feel like I can see quite a lot around me, even though I can't see dead straight behind. I've just got all of the crazy cockpit controls right up above me. Now, we need to talk a little bit more, obviously, about the drive, but I think we need to get onto a slightly more flowing bit of road to do so. This is case in point. The sounds come alive. It feels very industrial, but I'm loving that because as experiences go, which is what, at the end of the day, this is about, as a road car, the reason you'd want to drive this on the road is to get out of it and go, oh my gosh, what have I just experienced? This is kind of, kind of right up there, right? That's what you want from these types of things. I know what it's like on the racetrack. I've been there and I've been blown away by it. I mean, as I said earlier, GT3 level performance, GT3 lap times, that type of thing, and obviously, that is a big step ahead of pretty much any road car, ahead of what a Senna can do, that kind of thing. I said any road car. This is a road car. This is a car with number plates, and you know, as we go through a few more of these bigger bumps, obviously, you're feeling them, but you actually don't feel them, like I said, as much as I expected. This rides down here better than I originally thought because this is rough. This is rough, this is quite narrow, and the Behemoth is actually easier to position on the road than I thought as well. Like, I'm very comfortable and confident with where it's sitting, and I have to be honest, when I drove the Zenbo for the first time, that scared the daylights out of me. I felt like that thing was huge coming down here, whereas, you know, as cars come towards us, I know where we're at, I know what we're doing, but the foot back on the throttle though, weaved out through these lanes, oh yes, sunshine out. Behemoth out in force. Oh, this is absolutely incredible, and I love how much it pushes you towards that left foot braking type of style. Just, you feel like you're sat in a race car, you feel like you're in the tub of something that should be driving around a racetrack, yet inside, we've got some nice leather hand grips on the steering wheel, nice leather orange trim around the dashboard, the same for the preparations and design of the seats. The style of it all inside here is really quite something, and the power delivery is truly mega. This is, this is really cool, those swooshes and lift-off noises as well. I am loving this, the car has come alive, it's absolutely come alive. The only thing that I wish right now is that the lanes are a little bit less busy, because this is surprisingly a great place to drive this thing. I didn't expect there to be so much fun on these types of roads, I thought I'd need to get out to the big flowing dual carriageways and the motorways to be able to kind of drive it a little bit more, but down here, like I said, and obviously this is a left-hand drive car in the United Kingdom, driving on the left-hand side of the road, it's all a little bit backwards, but I'm quite used to that, and I think the really central seating position helps a lot with feeling the balance and feeling where it is, feeling where it sits on the tarmac, but you know, as we quickly catch up with the group of cars ahead, quite a lineup of cars, those bangs of the gearbox, I love it, and obviously the helical cut gears mean that you have slightly less gearbox whine going on inside the car, but there's a nice amount to make it feel like it's a race car without being too much that it's unpleasant. I think having a conversation with your passenger in here would be a stretch, it's going to be, it's loud, let's not beat about the bush, but you can manage, and the way the seats are staggered as well between the passenger is slightly offset, so you actually don't have too much of a problem being sat right beside one another. That's actually pretty quick, as you would expect, that power to weight, the final car will have around 720 horsepower at only a thousand kilos, I mean, just got to look at the numbers, the numbers tell a story, and combine that with a whole tonne of downforce, and we're running on the Ferrari Ferrari tyres as well, so familiar tyre for me from the 75 LTE in the centre, a road tyre, but a road tyre that really performs even better once you've got some heat in it, once you've got it up to temperature, you're out having some fun, you're on a track day, enjoying it to the max, but here it's actually doing a pretty good job of this. I won't lie that I find the seat a bit firm, there's not a whole lot of seat padding, I wouldn't mind a little cushion for my lower back, but seats are such a personal thing to each and every individual, what works for me is slightly different for the next person. I like the width of it though, the comfort in terms of how much space I have, with the position of the steering wheel, which has quite a lot of movement in it, you can get this to a pretty good position, whoever you are, you know, I like to have a steering wheel quite close to me to drive, but yet the pedal's quite far away, and it allows me to do that and have it all exactly as I want it, as we now start driving through town, and you know, I can keep it in third gear and there's a ton of torque, in fact, if I go up a few more gears, let's have it in fourth gear here, right, if I get my foot on the throttle in fourth gear, it picks up instantly, there's actually a lot going on, nearly 800Nm, right. Now though, we've got some dual carriageway, on the way to Tesco, here we go, open road. Gosh, it gets pretty wild once you start accelerating, both the sound, but also, I'm actually quite surprised still at the gearbox, I mean, it's full, just bang into the next gear, but it happens so quickly, that it's actually kind of smooth, there's no, obviously, artificial type of kick, like you'd get with a regular road going auto, wow, this is, I think, to be honest, in the power down, getting a little bit of a move on, no way, how cool is this, look, random Ferrari 296 spotted, that's kind of cool, that's actually really kind of cool to just coincidentally find on the motorway, you're probably like, what the heck is this, and I would be as well, because this is no normal car, this, you'd have to really know your stuff to recognise this, especially because deliveries haven't yet started, only a couple of months away, which I think is really cool as well, to go from introducing the car to the market, and I was able to drive it at the time it was introduced, when I drove it on track with Roma, that was literally when this car was introduced to the world, to being ready to deliver them to customers less than two years later, that's no easy feat for a manufacturer to achieve, to be able to pull that off, it's quite impressive, but yeah, nice little surprise, 296 over my shoulder, I mean, don't get me wrong, 700 horsepower might not be like the fastest or biggest number in the world, but believe me, it's a lot, especially when you're on the road, and I think the big thing is, when you're on a racetrack, your GT3 car has 550 to 600 horsepower, it doesn't need massive, massive numbers, no kind of 1500 or something like that, it's about the grip, it's about the downforce, it's about aero, and that's so much faster, because it feels faster when you're going through corners, rather than a straight line, yet here we are, just enjoying it on the road, and when we've got this smoother tarmac, like this, I tell you what, it rides really well, it deals with this better than I possibly could have imagined it would, it's just a really enjoyable, cool thing to experience, and the price point is quite interesting as well, because it's nothing like the latest crop of hypercars, it's not many millions, it's one and a bit, which is quite a unique spot on the market, and I guess working with key partners for different things helps make that possible, rather than doing it everything yourself from the ground up, but combining the things that are needed to make a car like this, where they don't exist, the door latches, the same latches used as well for the pedal box, and also for the engine bay cover, as well as it happens, making the most use of those types of developments and engineering parts that the company have created, and yeah, what can I say, I think this is pretty fabulous, anyway, supermarket is ahead of us, we will pull in, in just a moment, what a surreal experience, arriving with a car like this, to a regular supermarket, to a normal place, to come and do our grocery shopping, eh? I mean, why not? With the amount of luggage space that this thing has, the amount that you can actually fit in it, this is a place that you can come, this is totally legitimate. Now, admittedly, you might want to do as I'm about to do, and, you know, park at the back half of the parking lot, the car park, if I can work out where exactly the middle of the car is, but, I tell you what, hey, why not? You hold down to go into reverse, yes, like that, and then park it up, and job done, why not? Why not if you can? There we go, smooth and simple, then ignition, and it's off, power down for now, love it, absolutely love it, you've got the electronic door release, or you've got the backup lever up here, pop that open, and out you hop. Now, it's just a case of popping the steering wheel up on the dashboard, make sure it's safely out of the way, and then hoisting myself out of the car, which actually is easier to do than you would think, simple, there we go, so now, technically, we can leave this, use these storage buckets, we've got the helmet stuff on this side, actually, if you come around to this side as well, over here, we have the same over this side as well, just inside the door, hit the button, pop this open, and you could leave this at home, right, leave that at home, and then you've got plenty of room for your groceries, for all of your shopping, everything that you could want, get some lunch, get the job done, hey, every little bit of space helps, right, given we're here at Tesco, that is really, really quite a driving experience, I mean, we're not done, we've still got a tunnel run to come on the way back to base, but as a car, you look at it, and, you know, a 296 looks cool on the road, as we've seen, but that thing, I mean, look how low it is, look how small it is, look at the design of this tail, obviously, there's a ton of aero work, and in fact, come in closer, look at all these fins and veins, massive diffuser to manage the airflow through, and then this view you have of the exposed exhaust system, which I would not want to touch right now, because it would be rather toasty, all sitting above this number plate, because somehow, this wears plates, somehow, this is fully homologated, you know, if you're in Germany or something, it meets the regulations, you can drive one of those, you can own it and use it as a road car, yeah, I can't complain today, let's go grab some sandwiches, have some lunch, get on the road, back to base, back out onto the motorway we go, tell you what, quite funny to just enjoy driving this, I guess to basically prove the point, the point is kind of obvious, when you've got no passenger beside you, right, you can go to a supermarket, that's not a big deal, but it's the fact that this allows you to take your helmet with you, to take your overnight luggage with you, which is something that most track hyper cars just don't do, they don't offer that ability, you can't fit everything in, even if you want to, so you just have to make do, but this works, this does the job, this is an option, as we arrive towards the most epic tunnel in the world, where I can't put the windows down, there's no blurring windows, saving weight, but we can drop the gears, what can I say, what a drive, what an event, a sense of occasion, right, a really exciting thing to take out like this, and a really fun little spin that I've had with it, but we're going to cruise back towards base now, there are some more things I'd like to show you though about Behemoth and about how this works, but I'm probably the most impressed by how easy and welcoming it's felt, how I've just hopped in, and I felt like I know what's going on, and how much, I suppose, more compliant and better on the road it is than you might instinctively expect. That sounded pretty epic, if you ask me, in fact the whole experience has been really quite something, you look at this and you don't expect it to be a car that you can drive on the road, and I think that's what takes a bit of time to get your head around, of course Valkyrie was really the, let's say, first of that type of car, but there's a big difference in usability between what I've just experienced and my experiences in Valkyrie to date, where your knees are basically on the dashboard and you've got no luggage space, and you have to have headsets on because it's so loud inside to even think, let alone talk, but there are plenty of other details I could spend a lot of time showing you, for example, the artwork that is this aerofoil that's the mirror arm, literally coming out from the central tub of the bodywork over the arches, and then you've got all of the suspension componentry, which just screams proper race car, you know, screams like it's a Formula One car or something, and look at everything else that's going on because of all of the aero testing and everything that's effectively gone into making this, it's tiny here in the garage, it's super low, and then you've got this very sculpted rear deck as well for the airflow channels running through and over, coming past the car, bringing the hot air out and helping with downforce and keeping the car planted, and of course this has been a road drive, but a road drive in a car that I know is really quite capable out on track as well, and you can check that video out if you'd like to find out a little bit more about it. So today has been quite eye-opening to be honest, because obviously there have been some developments since the first time I drove the Praga Bohemia, but to drive it on very familiar roads is where you really understand and appreciate what's going on, because you can compare it to other stuff that I've experienced as well and get a better understanding, and I'm not going to stand here and pretend that it's the smoothest S-Class or Rolls-Royce-esque ride, because it's obviously not trying to be, but it's far more usable than I ever imagined. Visibility, comfort, drivability, gearbox, all around pretty smooth, and with an amount of power that you can kind of put your foot down and enjoy it a little bit as well. So I had a lot of fun with that, you know, it's an extreme car, it's not the kind of thing to use for every single purpose, for everyday driving, but if you had a garage like this, and you had a car like this, you can grab your helmet, stick it in the side pod, go drive to Silverstone, go have some fun, and I think at the end of the day that is exactly what this is for. So a big thanks to the Praga team for bringing the car out today, for the opportunity to drive it, and a big thanks as always to you guys for watching the video, I hope you've enjoyed it, learnt something about this insane thing, this truly extreme thing, the most extreme car that's ever been here at the Shmuseum. That's it for now though, thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you again very soon. Cheers!