Page 51 - Decadence

Lunch is nished and we break out to chat and spend some more time with the cars. I head back to my room to make a few calls and send a few emails, but can’t help staring out of my window where these two Carbon Fibre works of art are glistening in the low late afternoon sun. I get a text to join the rest of the assembled gang on the terrace for cocktails and aperitivo, so I throw on a jacket and make my way down.
Time seems to y past, but that’s what happens when you put a room full of passionate petrol heads together. Norman re-appears and announces dinner will be served in the wine cellar and would we care to follow him downstairs. The Mangiacane Estate is a producer of ne wines and olive oil, I could easily spend another day on a wine tour here, we are led to a large dining room with a table set for 30. The stone walls are covered on one side by rows of oak barrels. The menu on our name cards reads very well. The attention to detail that the Apollo team has shown with the place settings and name cards underpins the way they approach the build of the car. It’s all about detail, and knowing what’s right, understanding the person you are making the car for. I get the impression Norman already knows most of the people that will buy IE, I certainly know a few...
The dinner is served along with a truly stunning wine from the estate, the head wine maker gives us a little talk on the vineyard, what they produce and wine he is serving. The hospitality is perfectly “Italian” the food is amazing the wine superb and there is exactly enough. The conversation around the table is inspiring, its lovely to meet some of the other journalists, although I must admit to feeling a little like I’ve sneaked in the back door, some of these guys have been career motoring writers since they left school. Where as I came from a very different route, but this is what makes the evening so much fun. By the time the desserts are being served Norman makes a short announcement, thanking us all and his delectable little daughter delivers us all
perfectly packaged bottles of wine that are nearly as big as her. The evening is drawing to close and it’s time to hit my suite for a good nights sleep in the knowledge that I don’t need to have an early start.
My alarm was set for 9am (well I am an hour ahead of the UK), but before I hear the alarm tone of my iPhone, I am woken by the music of the 6.3 litre V12. I had left the shutters open so could see the two cars singing their dawn chorus directly from my mezzanine positioned bed through the tall window on the lower oor. Once up and out for breakfast I see the rest of the gang in the drawing room as they welcome todays group of internet bloggers and in uencers... apparently now, people who buy €2.3 million track toys are in uenced by social media, Mmm, not so sure about that one. I don’t think many of the guys I know have curated their collection of supercars or classics because they watched a video on YouTube. I think more accurately that social media is the millennial equivalent of our posters on the bedroom wall.
So as we leave for the airport, after a morning sitting in the Tuscan sun making calls, I am beginning to think Norman Choi is maybe more Italian than he is Hong Kong investment company. His hospitality is impeccable, his passion for cars and the way they drive and feel is unquestionable and he has put his money where his mouth is and taken a company who’s founder had left and given it an exciting new lease of life. The Apollo Intensa Emozione is a fabulous creation, as Greek mythology would have us believe, Apollo was the god of the Sun, Light, music and prophecy so the name becomes very apt as this car has a godlike aura when the sun hits it, it’s engine is pure music and if it has a prophecy it would be that the million plus hyper car has a new god.
I can’t wait to get behind the wheel of this machine, it looks like Batman designed it and it sounds like a choir of angels. It has the bedroom wall appeal, with its gull wing doors and roof the tail n, that will make any young petrol head fall asleep dreaming of owning one. If this is the starting project that leads to a road legal Apollo then I’m going to keep Norman Choi’s number on my speed dial as I would want to be one of the rst to own the road car.
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