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> The Dome Zero (童夢-零, Dōmu Zero) was a prototype sports car from DOME Co. Ltd that was exhibited at the 48th Geneva Auto Show in 1978. The Dome project, pronounced “do-mu” or “child’s dream” in Japanese, was started by Minoru Hayashi in 1975, with the goal of producing sports cars using knowledge gained from auto racing. The Zero was to be their first production road car and Dome planned to produce a limited number for sale in Japan. Despite multiple prototypes and homologation efforts, the Zero was never approved by regulatory bodies for sale in Japan or overseas. As a result, the project was not commercially viable and the Zero never entered series production. [This] led to the development of the Dome Zero P2 prototype, a car made specifically for export and sale in countries such as the United States. Hayashi believed this would also allow sales to the Japanese market without regulatory approval…via grey market re-imports.
> When introduced, the Dome Zero P2 was estimated to have a retail price between US$30,000 to US$60,000. Efforts to homologate the P2 for sale in Japan and overseas failed, and it was never produced for commercial sale.
Seriously, there’s no way this guy hadn’t seen the Countach when he first designed this. He even debuted it at Geneva (albeit in 1978, after the Countach was already in production). On the other hand, 143 HP in a car weighing only a ton and a beer keg would be a recipe for a winner especially in the late ’70s that he somehow managed despite the addition of the ridiculous buggy-bumpers that afflicted most Italian cars destined for US shores at the time; that’s a Lotus-level power-to-weight ratio. It used the Nissan/Datsun 2.8L straight-6 from the Z-cars so reliability (and EPA approval) would not have been an issue, but there was no way anyone would touch even the $30,000 low end of the MSRP ($130,000 in 2024) for a Japanese car in 1970s America much less in the numbers Hayashi needed for homologation.
![Gloriously bright [Lotus Elise Series 2]](https://www.evshift.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/kfti1whrcudg1-770x515.jpeg "Gloriously bright [Lotus Elise Series 2]")
![[Fiat 600] located in the Bay Area, CA](https://www.evshift.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/x13hxb2gytdg1-770x515.jpg "[Fiat 600] located in the Bay Area, CA")
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Ah, the Seventies. The Malaise Era for the US, the doorstop era for concept cars. From [le Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_Zero):
> The Dome Zero (童夢-零, Dōmu Zero) was a prototype sports car from DOME Co. Ltd that was exhibited at the 48th Geneva Auto Show in 1978. The Dome project, pronounced “do-mu” or “child’s dream” in Japanese, was started by Minoru Hayashi in 1975, with the goal of producing sports cars using knowledge gained from auto racing. The Zero was to be their first production road car and Dome planned to produce a limited number for sale in Japan. Despite multiple prototypes and homologation efforts, the Zero was never approved by regulatory bodies for sale in Japan or overseas. As a result, the project was not commercially viable and the Zero never entered series production. [This] led to the development of the Dome Zero P2 prototype, a car made specifically for export and sale in countries such as the United States. Hayashi believed this would also allow sales to the Japanese market without regulatory approval…via grey market re-imports.
> When introduced, the Dome Zero P2 was estimated to have a retail price between US$30,000 to US$60,000. Efforts to homologate the P2 for sale in Japan and overseas failed, and it was never produced for commercial sale.
Seriously, there’s no way this guy hadn’t seen the Countach when he first designed this. He even debuted it at Geneva (albeit in 1978, after the Countach was already in production). On the other hand, 143 HP in a car weighing only a ton and a beer keg would be a recipe for a winner especially in the late ’70s that he somehow managed despite the addition of the ridiculous buggy-bumpers that afflicted most Italian cars destined for US shores at the time; that’s a Lotus-level power-to-weight ratio. It used the Nissan/Datsun 2.8L straight-6 from the Z-cars so reliability (and EPA approval) would not have been an issue, but there was no way anyone would touch even the $30,000 low end of the MSRP ($130,000 in 2024) for a Japanese car in 1970s America much less in the numbers Hayashi needed for homologation.