Unplugged Performance is going back to Pikes Peak in 2026. That alone would be news. The Hawthorne, California company sat out the mountain in 2024 and 2025 after Dark Helmet, their Model S APEX race car, posted a sub-10-minute run (9:54.901) in 2023 and stacked lap records at Laguna Seca, Buttonwillow, and Willow Springs along the way. They built one of the most legitimate motorsport programs in the EV world, full stop. So the return matters. What makes it genuinely wild is how they’re returning: with no driver, on a Tesla Cybercab platform, wrapped in gold paint, wearing a pink Casa Bonita rear wing, and bearing the name Goldmember.
Yes, that Goldmember. The Spaceballs-to-Austin-Powers pipeline continues at Unplugged Performance, and honestly, it tracks perfectly.
A Robotaxi Turned Race Car
The concept is straightforward, even if the execution is anything but. Unplugged Performance took the upcoming Tesla Cybercab, a platform designed from the ground up for autonomous operation with no steering wheel and no pedals, and turned it into a purpose-built hillclimb car. The entire Pikes Peak aerodynamic package from Dark Helmet has been transplanted onto the Cybercab’s compact body. The massive dual-element rear wing, the full carbon splitter with integrated canards, the side skirts, the rear diffuser; it’s all here, adapted and tuned for a chassis that was never meant to see a race course.
The result looks like something a teenager would render in Blender at 2 AM, and it’s glorious. Gold-finished body panels, butterfly doors cracked open, a towering rear wing in pink Casa Bonita livery, and enough aero furniture bolted to it that you’d swear it was cosplaying as a DTM car. Unplugged Performance insists it’s not just a show piece. They say it’s fast. The specs suggest they might be right.
1,020 Horsepower, No Driver
Goldmember runs a tri-motor powertrain producing 1,020 hp and 1,050 lb-ft of torque. For context, this is a robotaxi platform. The claimed 0-60 time is under 2 seconds. Curb weight sits at 4,200 pounds, which is heavy for a dedicated hillclimb car but roughly 700 pounds lighter than Dark Helmet was at Pikes Peak. The tri-motor hardware and battery mass for the full 12.42-mile course make that number reasonable.
The aero number is the one that matters most. Unplugged Performance claims over 4,000 pounds of downforce at 150 mph. That’s nearly the car’s own curb weight in aerodynamic load, which means that at speed, the tires are experiencing roughly double their static weight in force, pushing them into the pavement. At 14,115 feet of elevation, where the air is thin enough to rob both power and aero efficiency, generating that kind of downforce requires serious engineering. This isn’t an off-the-shelf wing bolted to a trunk lid. It’s the same CFD-developed, mountain-validated program that Unplugged refined over four consecutive Pikes Peak campaigns with Dark Helmet.
Full Carbon Fiber Aero, Straight From Dark Helmet
The aerodynamic package is manufactured entirely in advanced carbon fiber composite. Up front, a full carbon splitter assembly with integrated canards manages underbody airflow and generates front-axle downforce. Carbon fiber side skirts seal the gap between the underbody and the road surface, accelerating air through the flat floor and feeding it to the rear. Out back, the dual-element carbon-fiber rear wing works with a full-carbon rear diffuser to generate the majority of the rear downforce. Every element was developed in CFD and then validated at altitude during the actual Pikes Peak competition.
At 150 mph, the combined package produces those 4,000+ pounds of downforce, enough to theoretically stick the car to a ceiling with force to spare. In the thin air above treeline, where most aero packages start to lose effectiveness, Unplugged’s Pikes Peak-specific design compensates with an aggressive surface area and angle of attack. Four years of refining this stuff on the actual mountain count for something, and it shows in the numbers.
UP-03 Pikes Peak Spec Wheels and Yokohama Advan A005 Tires
Goldmember sits on Unplugged Performance UP-03 Pikes Peak Spec forged wheels, sized at 19×11 inches with an ET +31 offset. These are the same wheels that carried Dark Helmet to its record-breaking Pikes Peak time. Forged from aerospace-grade 6061-T6 aluminum, the UP-03 uses an I-beam spoke design that was FEA-optimized for rigidity under extreme cornering loads. Knurled inner barrels prevent tire slip during hard acceleration and braking, which matters when you’re routing 1,050 lb-ft through the drivetrain. Each wheel carries a 950 kg load rating while keeping unsprung mass genuinely low.
The rubber is Yokohama Advan A005, the same compound Unplugged Performance and Yokohama co-developed specifically for hillclimb competition. The A005 is built for maximum mechanical grip across a wide temperature range, a critical characteristic on Pikes Peak where surface temps swing wildly between sun-baked lower sections and the frigid summit. Yokohama’s biomass compound technology means these tires are partially derived from sustainable materials, which fits the broader narrative of proving EV racing can be both fast and environmentally conscious. The wide 19×11 barrel, paired with the A005’s aggressive contact patch, gives Goldmember the mechanical grip it needs to actually exploit all that aerodynamic downforce.
Full Unplugged Performance Race Suspension
The suspension is the Unplugged Performance High Performance Suspension Package, the same comprehensive setup developed and validated on Dark Helmet. At its core are UP x Öhlins TTX 4-Way Pikes Peak Spec coilovers, co-engineered between Öhlins and Unplugged Performance as a complete replacement for the factory air suspension. The 4-way configuration allows independent tuning of rebound and compression across low- and high-speed settings, giving the autonomous system a platform that can be precisely dialed for Pikes Peak’s combination of high-speed sweepers, tight switchbacks, and terrible road surface conditions in the upper section. The internals are forged 7075 and 6061 aluminum with hard nickel-coated steel components; the reservoir design prevents cavitation across the full adjustment range, and Pikes Peak Spec Swift Springs complete the assembly. Ride height is adjustable from stock to 60mm lower.
Behind the coilovers, Goldmember runs the full UP billet suspension arm package: billet adjustable front upper control arms, billet rear trailing arms, billet rear traction arms, billet rear lower arms, billet adjustable rear camber arms, and billet adjustable rear toe arms. Every rear bushing point has been replaced with precision billet components that eliminate the compliance and deflection of factory rubber mounts. The adjustable camber and toe arms let the team dial alignment for the specific demands of the course, which becomes especially critical when you’re asking an autonomous system to hold a precise line through 156 turns. The UP Adjustable Front and Rear Sway Bar Set ties it all together: a 2-way adjustable front bar and a 3-way adjustable rear bar, both developed on Dark Helmet to reduce body roll and sharpen turn-in without destroying compliance over the rough upper-section pavement.
Stage 3: S-APEX Brakes and Carbon Fiber Cooling Ducts
Goldmember runs the Unplugged Performance Stage 3: S-APEX Brake System, the top-tier package in UP’s brake lineup. Up front, a 6-piston monoblock caliper clamps a 394 x 36mm carbon ceramic rotor with a 93 percent increase in pad-to-rotor contact area compared to stock. That’s nearly double the friction surface absorbing energy on every stop, plus over 25 pounds of unsprung weight savings per axle. The rear matches the approach: a 365 x 28mm carbon ceramic rotor with a 56mm sweep annulus and large-sweep pads delivering 19 percent more contact area while cutting another 16 pounds of rotational mass. Combined, the full carbon ceramic conversion drops over 40 pounds of unsprung, rotating weight compared to iron brakes.
Feeding those rotors is the UP Carbon Fiber Brake Cooling Duct Kit, developed through more than a year of race testing and proven to reduce rotor and caliper temperatures by over 200 degrees under sustained hard braking. The ducts use an innovative magnetic cover system designed to block road debris during street driving and be removed for race duty. On Goldmember, the covers stay off permanently. Stainless steel braided brake lines complete the system, eliminating the expansion that plagues rubber lines under repeated thermal cycling. When there’s no human foot modulating the brake pedal, the autonomous stack needs perfectly predictable, repeatable deceleration characteristics to plan braking points through every corner on the mountain. Hardware-level consistency isn’t optional here; it’s a prerequisite.
Safety Without a Driver
Running a 1,020-horsepower race car up a mountain with nobody inside it forces you to rethink what safety means. Goldmember carries a full Unplugged Performance Pikes Peak Spec chromoly roll cage, FIA-certified and welded to the chassis at twelve points with diagonal bracing for structural integrity in a rollover or off-course scenario. No driver to protect, but sanctioning bodies and basic engineering sense both demand rollover protection at these speeds.
An onboard FIA-compliant automatic fire suppression system targets the battery enclosure, motor housings, and electrical junction points. The system triggers automatically via thermal sensors and can also be activated remotely by the pit crew, because an autonomous vehicle obviously can’t reach for a fire extinguisher. An independent redundant braking system provides failsafe stopping power if the primary system faults. A remote kill switch is accessible from race control. GPS-fenced course boundaries trigger automatic braking if the car deviates beyond defined tolerances from the racing line. A full telemetry suite streams real-time vehicle health data to the engineering team at the base of the mountain. If something goes wrong, the car shuts itself down faster than any human could react. That, Unplugged Performance argues, is the entire point of autonomous safety done right.
Full Self-Driving: Hillclimb
The software running Goldmember is what Unplugged Performance is calling “Full Self-Driving: Hillclimb,” a dedicated autonomous driving stack purpose-built for competitive hillclimb racing. The Cybercab platform ships with the full suite of cameras, sensors, and onboard compute required for Level 4+ autonomy. Unplugged Performance’s engineering team took that hardware and aimed it at one of the most complex driving challenges in motorsport: 156 turns, 12.42 miles, and nearly 5,000 feet of elevation gain, all above the clouds.
The argument for doing this goes beyond novelty. If FSD can handle a competitive run up Pikes Peak, navigating blind corners, rapidly shifting grip levels, elevation changes, and varying surface conditions, the case for its readiness on normal public roads gets significantly stronger. Racing has always been the proving ground for road car technology. Unplugged Performance is betting that the same principle applies to autonomy.
Why Build a Race Car on a Robotaxi?
It sounds like a punchline, but there’s real logic to it. The Cybercab is Tesla’s most autonomous-forward platform, designed from scratch without traditional driver controls. If you’re building a vehicle that will never have a human behind the wheel, it’s the cleanest starting point available. The compact dimensions also work in its favor for hillclimb duty; a shorter wheelbase means quicker direction changes through Pikes Peak’s tight switchbacks, and the lower overall mass compared to a full-size Model S Plaid gives the aero package more authority over the car’s behavior at speed. For a company that made its name extracting race car performance from Tesla street cars, turning the most unlikely Tesla into a Pikes Peak contender is perfectly on brand.
See You at the Mountain Top
Unplugged Performance has one stated goal for Goldmember: reach the summit of Pikes Peak faster than any autonomous vehicle in history. The field of autonomous Pikes Peak competitors currently stands at zero, so the bar sounds low on paper. But UP isn’t chasing a technicality. They want a time competitive with human drivers.
With 1,020 horsepower, a downforce-to-weight ratio approaching 1:1, UP x Öhlins race suspension, Stage 3 S-APEX carbon ceramic brakes, UP-03 Pikes Peak Spec forged wheels wrapped in Yokohama Advan A005 rubber, and an autonomous driving stack trained specifically for competitive hillclimb conditions, Goldmember is either the most ambitious April Fools’ joke Unplugged Performance has ever pulled, or a genuine look at where motorsport is headed next. Either way, the gold paint and the Casa Bonita livery are staying.
