Page 48 - Decadence

Gumpert was the magician behind the world changing Audi Quattro rally cars amongst other things German. So when he applied his considerable pedigree to a road going race car he hit every mark. The Gumpert was a car you could drive to a circuit, beat all the race car times and drive home.
So one of factors for success in this market is personality. Do the guys behind these brands know their onions? Horacio Pagani was the composites specialist for Lamborghini, when he set up shop to build the Zonda, the success of this model pushed the prices from the 100’s of thousands into the millions and there is still a waiting list. From an engineering and t and nish point of view the Huayra is the bench mark. I once asked why it was more expensive to have the unpainted raw carbon nish that a sexy paint job. About an hour later I had been shown every detail and fully understood the huge amount of work that goes into a perfect unpainted nish.
Christian Von Koenigsegg founded his car company 23 years ago, again when pricing just above the current offerings was acceptable. His huge personality and excellent cars, not to mention some really funky doors and mad start sequence of buttons put him on the map. Again, almost falling foul of the Top Gear boys when the Stig put the CXX off the circuit, he responded by enlisting their help and the CXXR was back to top the hot lap board with a new aero package. In fact the Top Gear lap times have played well in this sector.
Zenvo’s Trolls Vollertsen is a genius when it comes to forcing air into engines, with the twin supercharged and Turbo charged engines he builds in his Danish super surgery whilst collaborating with his team of super nerds to build drive a train control that will put down the 1163bhp the TS1 produces on snow. So we can see there are a gang of super techy personalities sitting behind these hyper hot rods that set them apart from the Lambos, Ferrari, Mercedes, Audis and Aston Martins of the super brand performance sector.
So when I got a call inviting me out to Tuscany for the launch of the new Apollo Intensa Emozione I was intrigued to see what had risen from the ashes of Gumpert. The Gumpert Apollo topped the Top Gear laps board until the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport came along, but was always considered the ugly duckling. It looked like an LMP car on the road (which is pretty much what it was) Roland Gumpert had left the company, during his rein it was very very German, every aspect of the car was designed and built in Germany. The evening I got the invite I was having dinner in London with a friend who used to own one, so I asked him what he thought.... we were on our mains by the time he’d nished raving about it and how fast it was round any circuit. The new Apollo Automobil company has relocated to Turin were the the full carbon bre tub is built by
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