Reborn from the ashes, and stark-raving mad.
If you're a car nut, there’s no doubt that you’re familiar with all those marketing videos that show experienced craftsman painstakingly creating clay models of upcoming vehicles using a sharp eye, a deft hand, and a touch so gentle that it wouldn’t even stir a sleeping baby. The amount of finesse required to sculpt a car from scratch is immense, and it leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy in the knowledge that a real human touch was applied in the making of your car.
Now imagine if that same process was done by a bunch of 20-something hoorays armed with meat cleavers and shearing knives. There yet?
Welcome to the Apollo Intensa Emozione, a 581kW track-monster that will probably eat you alive.
The Apollo IE (as it’s being affectionately called) is a track-only limited-run weapon that will set back collectors a cool €2.3-million (or a whisker over $3.5-million), and has been produced from the ashes of what used to be Gumpert. That company was acquired by Hong Kong businessman Norman Choi, who then proceeded to retool the company and set it up to produce this jaw-dropping exercise in mechanical engineering.
The old Gumpert Apollo employed a steel chassis that was then clad in carbon panels, but this new IE is almost entirely carbon fibre. As a result, the chassis weighs in at just 105kg (that’s not a typo), and the entire car is just 1250kg. Yes, one thousand two hundred and fifty kilograms. And powering that impressively light body is a V12 engine that was engineered in Italy, specifically in Maranello, by some company that might be familiar to those who like supercars.
Autotecnica Motori, an Italian engineering house, retools the engine between that particular Italian supercar manufacturer before it gets bolted onto the Apollo, allowing it to rev all the way up to 9,000rpm. Once screaming, the Apollo will hit 100km/h from rest in just 2.7-seconds, before hitting its top speed of 335km/h. All that power goes to the rear wheels via a six speed manual transmission. Naturally-aspirated, and a do-it-yourself gearbox? We’ve died and gone to heaven, surely.
The attention to detail employed throughout the car is borderline-obsessive, with a degree of fanaticism that we’ve only really seen in the most extreme products from firms like Pagani. The Apollo team are so obsessed with perfection that the exhaust, for example, is 3D laser printed, at a cost that is described as “more than a whole BMW M4.” We suspect that the radical design, wonderfully-simple powertrain, and screaming V12 all played a role in selling out all 10 of these ultra-performance cars.
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