Unplugged Performance has spent years proving that Teslas belong on the world’s most demanding race courses. From a sub-10-minute Pikes Peak run with Dark Helmet in 2023 to lap records at Laguna Seca, Buttonwillow, and Willow Springs, the Hawthorne, California, company has built one of the most credible motorsport programs in the EV space. After sitting out 2024 and 2025 at the mountain, Unplugged Performance is returning to the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in 2026. But we’re not bringing a driver.
Meet Goldmember, a purpose-built autonomous hillclimb car based on the upcoming Tesla Cybercab (Robotaxi) platform. And yes, the name is exactly what you think it is.
From Dark Helmet to Goldmember
If you’ve followed Unplugged Performance’s Pikes Peak campaigns, you already know “Dark Helmet“, the Model S-APEX race car that attacked the mountain with one of the most aggressive aerodynamic packages ever fitted to a Tesla. Goldmember takes that entire Pikes Peak aero program, every element of it, and transplants it onto the Cybercab’s compact, autonomous-ready chassis. The massive carbon-fiber rear wing with its dual-plane endplates, the sculpted front splitter assembly, the full carbon diffuser, the canards; all of it is here, tuned and adapted for a platform that doesn’t need a driver at all.
The result is a vehicle that looks like it was pulled from a fever dream: a gold-finished robotaxi body, butterfly doors cracked open, and a pink “Casa Bonita” liveried wing towering off the rear deck. It’s absurd. It’s beautiful. And Unplugged Performance insists it’s fast.
Goldmember runs a tri-motor powertrain producing 1,020 horsepower and 1,050 lb-ft of torque. That is not a typo for a car built on a robotaxi platform. The claimed 0-60 (0-97km/h) time sits at under 1.5 seconds, which puts it in the same conversation as the quickest purpose-built EVs on the planet. Curb weight checks in at 4,200 pounds, which is heavier than you’d want for a dedicated hillclimb race car, but not unreasonable given the tri-motor hardware and battery mass required for the full Pikes Peak course. After all, the car needs to traverse a daunting 19-mile (31-kilometer) uphill battle that is the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb circuit.
The real headline, though, is the downforce figure. Unplugged Performance claims over 4,000 pounds of aerodynamic downforce at 150 mph. That means at speed, the car is generating nearly its own curb weight in downforce, effectively doubling the force pushing the tires into the tarmac. At altitude, where thinner air robs both power and aero efficiency, that kind of number is critical. It’s also the direct legacy of the Dark Helmet program, where Unplugged learned exactly how to make a sedan-shaped Tesla stick to a mountain road at elevation.
Unplugged Performance Advanced Carbon Fiber Aero
The aerodynamic package on Goldmember isn’t decorative. It’s the complete Unplugged Performance Pikes Peak high-downforce aero program, manufactured entirely in advanced carbon fiber composite and transferred directly from the Dark Helmet race car. The front end wears a full carbon-fiber splitter assembly with integrated canards, designed to manage airflow under the car and generate front-axle downforce at speed. Along the sides, carbon fiber side skirts seal the gap between the underbody and the road, accelerating airflow through the flat floor and feeding the rear diffuser. Out back, the massive dual-element carbon-fiber rear wing (wearing that unmistakable pink Casa Bonita livery) works in concert with a full carbon rear diffuser to draw air from beneath the car and generate the bulk of the rear downforce. Every element was CFD-developed and validated at 14,115 feet of elevation during Unplugged Performance’s consecutive Pikes Peak campaigns.
The result is a complete aero kit that doesn’t just bolt onto the Cybercab’s body; it transforms it into a ground-effect machine. At 150 mph, the combined package produces those 4,000+ pounds of downforce, enough to theoretically drive the car upside down on a ceiling and still have force to spare. In the thin air above treeline, where a standard aero package would lose significant efficiency, Unplugged’s Pikes Peak-specific design compensates with sheer surface area and aggressive angle of attack. This is race aero, built by a team that has spent four consecutive years refining it on the actual mountain.
Wheels and Tires
Goldmember rolls on Unplugged Performance UP-03 Pikes Peak Spec forged wheels in a 19×11 front and 19×11 rear square race fitment with an ET +31 offset, the same specification that carried Dark Helmet to its record-breaking 9:54.901 Pikes Peak run. These are not repurposed street wheels. The UP-03 Pikes Peak Spec is forged from aerospace-grade 6061-T6 aluminum with an I-beam spoke design optimized through finite element analysis for maximum rigidity under extreme cornering loads. Knurled inner barrels prevent tire slip during hard acceleration and braking, a detail that matters considerably when you’re putting over 1,000 lb-ft through the rear axle. The result is a wheel that is both absurdly strong and genuinely lightweight, carrying a 950 kg load rating per corner while keeping unsprung mass to a minimum.
Wrapped around those UP-03s are Yokohama Advan A005 performance tires, the same compound that Unplugged Performance and Yokohama co-developed for hillclimb competition. The A005 is engineered for maximum mechanical grip across a wide temperature range, which is critical on Pikes Peak, where surface temperatures can swing dramatically between the sun-baked lower sections and the frigid summit. Yokohama’s biomass compound technology also makes these tires partially derived from sustainable materials, aligning with the broader mission of proving that electric performance racing can be both fast and forward-thinking. The combination of the wide 19×11 forged barrel and the A005’s aggressive contact patch gives Goldmember the mechanical grip foundation to exploit all that aerodynamic downforce.
Suspension
Connecting all that aero and grip to the road is the Unplugged Performance High-Performance Suspension Package, the same comprehensive chassis overhaul developed for and validated on Dark Helmet over four years of Pikes Peak campaigns. The foundation is a set of 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 both low-speed and high-speed damper settings, giving the autonomous driving system a suspension platform that can be dialed in for Pikes Peak’s unique combination of high-speed sweepers, tight switchbacks, and brutal road surface conditions. Lightweight forged 7075 and 6061 aluminum components with hard-nickel-coated steel internals keep unsprung mass low, and the integral reservoir design prevents cavitation across the full range of damper adjustments. Pikes Peak Spec Swift Springs complete the coilover assembly, with ride height adjustable from stock to 60mm lower.
Behind the coilovers, Goldmember runs the full Unplugged Performance billet suspension arm package: billet adjustable front upper control arms (FUCAs), billet rear trailing arms, billet rear traction arms, billet rear lower arms, billet adjustable rear camber arms, and billet adjustable rear toe arms. Every bushing point in the rear suspension has been replaced with precision billet components that eliminate the compliance and deflection of factory rubber mounts, giving the chassis razor-sharp geometry control under high lateral and longitudinal loads. The adjustable camber and toe arms allow the team to fine-tune alignment to the specific demands of the course, which is critical when you’re asking an autonomous system to hold a precise racing line through 156 turns. Tying it all together is the UP Adjustable Front and Rear Sway Bar Set, featuring a 2-way adjustable front bar and a 3-way adjustable rear bar, both developed on the Dark Helmet race car to reduce body roll and sharpen turn-in without sacrificing compliance over Pikes Peak’s notoriously rough upper-section road surface.
Brakes
Stopping a 4,200-pound autonomous race car from 150+ mph, repeatedly, through 156 turns and nearly 5,000 feet of descent on the way back down, requires brakes that don’t fade, don’t warp, and don’t add unnecessary mass. Goldmember runs the Unplugged Performance Stage 3: S-APEX Brake System, the top-tier option in UP’s brake lineup and a core component of the S-APEX program. Up front, a 6-piston monoblock caliper clamps a 394 x 36mm carbon-ceramic rotor, nearly doubling pad contact area compared to the factory setup, with a 93 percent increase in pad-to-rotor surface area. That translates directly to more friction area to absorb energy, greater thermal capacity for repeated high-speed stops, and over 25 pounds of unsprung weight savings per axle. The rear system aligns with the philosophy, featuring a 365 x 28mm carbon-ceramic rotor with a 56mm sweep annulus and large-sweep pads that deliver 19 percent more pad contact area than stock while cutting another 16 pounds of rotational weight. Combined, the front and rear carbon-ceramic conversion sheds over 40 pounds of unsprung rotating mass compared to iron brakes.
Feeding those brakes is the Unplugged Performance Carbon Fiber Brake Cooling Duct Kit, developed over more than a year of testing in race conditions and proven to cut rotor and caliper temperatures by more than 200 degrees under sustained hard braking. The ducts feature an innovative magnetic cover system that can be removed for race duty to maximize airflow. For Goldmember, the covers stay off permanently. Stainless steel braided brake lines round out the system, ensuring consistent pedal feel and eliminating the expansion that can plague rubber lines under repeated high-heat cycling. When there’s no human foot on the brake pedal, the hardware-level consistency of the braking system becomes even more critical; the autonomous driving stack needs predictable, repeatable deceleration data to plan its braking points through every corner on the mountain.
Safety Systems
Running a 1,020-horsepower race car up a mountain with no driver inside demands a rethink of what safety means. Goldmember carries a full Unplugged Performance Pikes Peak Spec chromoly roll cage, FIA-certified and integrated into the Cybercab’s chassis, because even without a driver to protect, sanctioning bodies and common sense both require structural rollover protection for a vehicle competing at these speeds. The cage is welded to the chassis at 12 points and triangulated with diagonal bracing to maintain structural integrity during a rollover or off-course excursion.
Beyond the cage, Goldmember is equipped with an onboard FIA-compliant automatic fire-suppression system, with nozzles targeting the battery enclosure, motor housings, and electrical junction points. An autonomous vehicle can’t pull its own fire extinguisher, so the system is triggered automatically by thermal sensors and can also be activated remotely by the Unplugged Performance pit crew. The car runs a full Unplugged Performance SuperLight carbon ceramic brake package with 15.5-inch rotors, six-piston front calipers, stainless steel braided brake lines, and a carbon fiber brake cooling duct kit, the same setup that has repeatedly proven itself under the sustained high-heat braking demands of Pikes Peak’s descent. An independent redundant braking system provides failsafe stopping power in the event of a primary system fault, because when there’s no human foot to stomp the pedal, you need hardware-level redundancy.
Additional safety provisions include a remote kill switch accessible from race control, GPS-fenced course boundaries that trigger automatic braking if the vehicle deviates from the racing line beyond defined tolerances, and a full telemetry suite streaming real-time vehicle health data to the Unplugged Performance engineering team at the base of the mountain. If anything goes wrong, the car shuts itself down before a human would even have time to react. That, Unplugged Performance argues, is the whole point.
Full Self-Driving: Hillclimb Edition
Here’s where Goldmember gets truly unprecedented. The car is designed to compete in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb without a human driver. Unplugged Performance is calling the software suite “Full Self-Driving: Hillclimb,” a dedicated autonomous driving stack purpose-built for competitive hillclimb racing. Tesla’s Cybercab platform already ships with the full complement of cameras, sensors, and onboard compute necessary for Level 4+ autonomy. Unplugged Performance’s engineering team has taken that hardware and pointed it at one of the most complex driving challenges in motorsport: 156 turns, 12.42 miles, and nearly 5,000 feet of elevation gain from start to finish, all above the clouds.
The idea isn’t just novelty. Unplugged Performance sees autonomous racing as the next logical testing ground for self-driving technology. If FSD can handle a competitive run-up of Pikes Peak, negotiating blind corners, elevation changes, varying surface conditions, and rapidly shifting grip levels, the argument for its readiness on public roads becomes much more compelling. Racing has always been the proving ground for road car technology. Unplugged Performance is betting that principle applies to autonomy just as much as it does to brakes and suspension.
Why Cybercab?
Building a race car on a robotaxi platform sounds like a punchline, but there’s a logic to it that fits Unplugged Performance’s history perfectly. The Cybercab is Tesla’s most autonomous-forward platform, designed from the ground up without traditional driver controls. It’s the cleanest starting point for a vehicle that will never have a human behind the wheel. And for a company that has made its name by extracting race-car performance from Tesla street cars, turning the most unlikely Tesla into a Pikes Peak contender is exactly on-brand.
The Cybercab’s compact dimensions also work in its favor for hillclimb duty. A shorter wheelbase means quicker directional changes through Pikes Peak’s tight switchbacks, and the lower overall mass compared to a full-size sedan (even at 4,200 pounds with the tri-motor swap) gives the aero package more authority over the car’s behavior at speed.
See You at the Mountain Top
Unplugged Performance has set exactly one goal for Goldmember: reach the summit faster than any autonomous vehicle in history. Given that the field of autonomous Pikes Peak competitors currently stands at zero, the bar might sound low. But the company isn’t chasing a technicality. They want a time that would be competitive against human drivers, full stop.
With over 1,000 horsepower, a downforce-to-weight ratio approaching 1:1, and an autonomous driving stack trained specifically for competitive hillclimb conditions, Goldmember is a glimpse at where motorsport is headed.
Happy April 1st from Unplugged Performance. This is just a joke for now, but we want to make it real one day. Stay tuned and thanks for your support.
