Luxury car brands’ power play
A new crop of supercars are competing to capture the hearts – and wallets – of aficionados with a seductive blend of performance and looks.
Lotus Evija
In a chaotic media landscape, it can be hard to get attention, but when an industry lightweight such as Lotus announces it’s not going to build its first supercar because it’s going to leap straight to making a hypercar – and adds that it will be an EV – people pay attention.
Lotus has always felt like a company run by a bloke with a big grey beard and dirty overalls out the back of a shed somewhere in Brexit Britain. So the announcement that it is going to build something as startling as the Evija, and that it might just be the mightiest car on the planet, came as a truly electric shock.
Little Lotus, which usually makes super-light track cars with engines borrowed from Toyota, is claiming that the Evija will be the world’s most powerful production car, with 1471kW and 1700Nm. You’d assume tapping all that juice would drain its batteries
in about 45 seconds, yet the company claims a maximum range of 400km between recharges (which it says could take as little as nine minutes).
In terms of speed, the Evija’s sub three-second 0 to 100km/h time might be merely competitive, but its claimed ability to go from a standing start to 300km/h in under nine seconds would harry even an F1 car. A Bugatti Centodieci takes more than 13 seconds to do that. Being a Lotus, it will handle fabulously and be exciting to drive. But then it should be, with all that grunt, and it would need to be, with a price tag, once special Australian taxes are added, of around $4.53 million.
Lotus chief Phil Popham knows that what’s almost as important to the bottom line as selling Evijas is the boost to the company’s profile.
“The Lotus Evija is a car like no other,” he says. “It will re-establish our brand in the hearts and minds of sports car fans and on the global automotive stage.”
Bugatti Centodieci
Whenever Bugatti launches a new car, a Higgs Boson hum of excitement travels through the science community, because they know the laws of physics are about to cop a beating – again.
The arrival of the new Bugatti Centodieci, however, is a seismic event, not just because of its typically staggering numbers – just chew on the idea of 1176kW for a start – or its high-speed assault on reason and good sense, but because it is also an assault on your eyeballs.
Bugattis have always been striking to look at, but the styling department has clearly been watching too much sci-fi because this car looks like The Stig has been caught doing something compromising with a Stormtrooper’s helmet. From the front, at least, it looks terrifying, but the rear looks like every single piece of design ever created has been shoved into one vehicle.
Fortunately the Centodieci (it means, cleverly, 110 per cent) will mainly be moving too fast for people to get a good look at it. Lighter and more powerful than the already absurd Bugatti Chiron, it will hit 100km/h in 2.4 seconds, destroy the 200km/h mark in 6.1 seconds and smash through 300km/h in just 13.1 seconds.
It’s powered by what is undoubtedly a very, very noisy 8.0-litre quad-turbocharged W16 engine (think two twin-turbo V8s smashed together to create a monster), which produces 1176kW at a steaming 7000rpm, and 1600Nm of torque.
Just 10 of these crazed Centodiecis will be built, and buyers can have them in any colour they like. Sadly, all are already spoken for, despite an asking price of $13.1 million.
Chevrolet Corvette C8 Stingray
Many of us grow up wishing we had some of the cool things America has, such as New York, Disneyland and actual service in bars. When it comes to cars, some of these prayers have been answered in the past few years with the arrival of Mustangs and Camaros. But no American car, indeed perhaps no American object of any kind, has been as desirable and unobtainable as the Chevrolet Corvette, a mad missile of a muscle car that’s almost as crazy as it is cool.
Finally, after 55 years of waiting, a right-hand drive Corvette – the C8 Stingray–- will go on sale in Australia in 2020, and you can already hear the sound of enthusiasts slapping down a deposit on this mid-engine marvel of American iron (final pricing is not set but it’s expected to be something of a bargain at around $180,000). The Stingray is the eighth generation of the famous ’Vette, which has grown from a straight-line street racer in the typical American mould into a proper supercar – hence the radical move to put the engine in the middle, just like Ferrari does, for better balance. It retains its tyre-frying, wild-sliding rear-drive-only set-up, however, which will get its power from a modern yet old-school pushrod 6.2-litre V8 to make a very noisy 369kW at 6450rpm and 637Nm at 5150rpm. Yes, you’re going to need to wring its neck to get the most out of it, and it may try to remove your head from your neck while you do so, but Corvette fans wouldn’t want it any other way.
Further proof that timing is perfect for Down Under comes from the fact that Chevy’s designers appear to have mastered the arts of subtlety and beauty – this Corvette is almost Ferrari-like in its looks. And there’s not a Holden badge in sight.
Porsche Taycan
From almost the moment the wheels of the first 911 hit the road in 1963, Porsche’s iconic sports car has been the yardstick against which all others are measured, and they inevitably fall short. That’s exactly what makes the Taycan – the brand’s first purely electric vehicle – such a bold proposition, because suddenly the most likely contender to finally take down the 911 isn’t coming from an opposition car maker but from within the hallowed halls of Porsche itself. In fact, the Taycan makes the 911 look positively old fashioned. With a Nurburgring EV lap record already stuffed in its swag bag, it will clearly look to make the most of its new electric powertrain, with twin electric motors - one at each axle - that, in S guise, will deliver 560kW of power. That’s enough, Porsche says, to propel the Taycan to 100km/h in an eerily silent 2.8 seconds, and it will then carry on pushing to 260km/h.
Yes, electric cars are fast. Even the Tesla Model 3 will try to peel the eyebrows off your head if you’re too heavy with the accelerator. But Porsche has promised its all-new Taycan will be more than a one-trick pony.
This is a car designed to slot into your daily life, with around 500km of range from every charge, and should you have access to a fast enough charger, the ability to collect 400km in range in just 15 minutes. That should mean you can link Sydney to Melbourne with just a single 15-minute stop along the way.
The cabin carries on the futuristic feel – it’s filled with more gleaming screens than a JB Hi-Fi window display. Porsche has riffed on the look of that very first 911, too, with a single curved screen that replaces the traditional dials and gauges. There’s another screen in the centre of the dash, and yet another in front of the passenger so they can enjoy the drive experience, too.
Expect the Taycan to arrive around the middle of 2020, and to cost around $200,000 when it does.
McLaren GT
Not unlike an artist picking up their first brush and knocking out the Mona Lisa on a whim, it has taken McLaren a staggeringly short amount of time to find itself fighting in the same ring as the Old Masters of the supercar world. Remember, the British car maker has only been selling road cars in any real volume since 2011, and yet it’s already breathing down the necks of Ferrari and Lamborghini. In fact, if you remove the Urus SUV from the equation, it is ahead of the Raging Bull in outright supercar sales.
McLaren achieved that by following a pretty straightforward recipe: build cars as feather-light as possible and then fit the biggest, brawniest engines you can get your hands on. This new GT, though, marks its toughest test to date. Because while buyers of flame-spitting, tyre-shredding supercars might care little for comfort or practicality, those shopping for a grand tourer would probably rather not have their golden fillings rattled free every time they hit a road not smooth enough to ice skate on. Happily, McLaren’s first ever GT doesn’t sound as though it will be funding a summer house for a lucky orthodontist anytime soon. The new adaptive suspension is focused more on road over track than in any other McLaren, and new engine mounts minimise vibration for a softer and smoother drive. And while most super cars serve up interiors that feel as soft and compliant as the inside of a lunchbox, McLaren has dialled up the creature comforts with Nappa leather trim and a host of digital screens to play with.
That’s not to say the madness has gone completely. The engine might be mounted more softly, but it’s anything but soft. The 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 will propel the GT to 100km/h in just 3.2 seconds, thanks in no small part to the 456kW and 603Nm it sends thundering to the rear tyres. The top speed? A scenery-warping 326km/h. This particularly grand Grand Tourer is yours for $399,995.
Lamborghini Sian
When those power-mad engineers over at Lamborghini finally turned their attention to electrification (years after brands such as Ferrari and McLaren began rolling out the technology), you could bet a tanker full of petrol that it wouldn’t be for anything even approaching environmental reasons.
No, when the famed Raging Bull finally embraced hybrid technology, it could only ever be for one reason: more speed.
And so it should come as no surprise that the brand’s first-ever hybrid, the Sian, is also Lamborghini’s fastest ever car.
How fast, you ask? Try zero to 100km/h in a scarcely believable 2.8 seconds, and a top speed somewhere north of 350km/h. That’s blisteringly fast for a road car, and you can expect drivers’ licences to begin spontaneously combusting should any ever make their way to Australia.
Providing that tidal wave of propulsion is Lamborghini’s beloved V12, only this time tweaked to produce 577kW. And as if that’s not enough, a 48-volt e-motor adds an extra 25kW on take-off, boosting total output to a whopping 602kW.
The Aventador, for example – a car that feels designed from the ground up with the singular intention of scaring a driver witless – produces a comparatively paltry 566kW. And yes, that makes the Sian sound utterly terrifying.
The Sian, which means “flash” in the local Bolognese dialect of Lamborghini’s home in Italy, is a strictly limited-run affair, with the brand producing just 63 vehicles – all of which have already been sold. But more importantly, it’s a toe-dip into electrified waters for Lamborghini, and one that’s destined to keep that big V12 burbling away in future models for many years to come.
Bentley Flying Spur
The Flying Spur is that most rare of Bentleys – one designed to be enjoyed from behind the wheel, as opposed to a moving cigar lounge best enjoyed while sipping Champagne in the sumptuous rear seats.
That can be a tricky tightrope wire to walk, though, given luxury equals weight, and weight kills driving dynamics faster than a passion for holidays in the Phillipines can kill an Australian political career.
But the Flying Spur is packing a secret weapon under that football field’s worth of bonnet. In fact, it’s got 12 of them. And they would be each of the cylinders attached to Bentley’s 6.0-litre, twin-turbocharged W12 engine, which, in this case, will produce 467kW and a mountainous 900Nm of torque, which should be plenty to get the Bentley’s bulk up and moving.
Should you sink your slippered right foot into the cabin’s carpeting, the Flying Spur will do exactly as its name suggests, galloping to 100km/h in just 3.8 seconds before pushing on to a top speed of 333km/h – numbers made even more amazing by the fact that this Bentley has nearly 2.5 tonnes of metal, leather and wood to shift.
And once you are up and moving, the Flying Spur debuts some clever new technology that will help keep things light and breezy.
For one, a new all-wheel-steering system gives you control over the back tyres for more maneuverability, and when you feel at your very sportiest, the all-wheel-drive system will happily send the bulk of the available power thundering towards the rear tyres, giving you that genuine sports-car feel.
Away from winning roads, however, the three-chamber air suspension will essentially erase any ugly road imperfections long before they can make their presence known in the cabin, transforming the big Bentley from pulse-quickening to plush on city streets.
The Flying Spur can be yours in Australia early next year, with local pricing expected to start at around $400,000.
Tesla Roadster
Much like a politician, Tesla spokes-head Elon Musk constantly seeks to grab attention by postulating, and posting, outrageous promises. Unlike politicians, and indeed unlike most people in history, Musk has a remarkable record of making at least some of his more preposterous ideas become reality (don’t bet against him dying on Mars, as he has pledged to do).
So when he claims that the new Tesla Roadster will be the fastest production car ever made, capable of zapping its way to 100km/h in an unfeasible 1.9 seconds, we must avoid the urge to scoff. That is exactly what plenty of supercar competitors are doing, of course, because they say the limits of grip with street-legal tyres mean that no road car, no matter how powerful, is going to get under two seconds.
Yet Musk says it can, and will, be done – and other Tesla staff, including a senior test driver, have even declared that his claims are “conservative” and that the numbers have already been achieved in testing, rather than estimated on Elon’s laptop.
Electric cars, and Teslas in particular, can achieve amazing acceleration, thanks to their ability to provide maximum torque, and Musk has been touting absurd figures, like 10,000Nm, from the Roadster’s enormous 200kWh battery, double what the Model S has, which will allegedly provide a 1000km range.
The new car will also have electric motors front and rear, to provide all-wheel-drive grip and torque vectoring, to put all that grunt at the tyre where it’s most needed.
In an even more unusual move for Tesla, the Roadster looks pretty fantastic too, although it will mostly be a blur, particularly if it can hit Musk’s other claim – a zero to 160km/h sprint of 4.2 seconds.
The new Roadster will go on sale in 2020, at a price estimated to be around $US200,000, and in theory Australian buyers will be able to get into one by late next year. As the Model 3 experience has told us, however, one area where Musk’s promises often fall down is timing. But the Tesla Roadster certainly sounds like it will be worth the wait.
Ferrari SF90 Stradale
They might not admit it but the folks at Ferrari have clearly developed a two-pronged approach to selling supercars. First, they want their cars to be the best, and if possible, the fastest, but what seems equally important in maintaining the mystique of the brand is their desire that their vehicles, always, will be the most beautiful.
As the company’s celebrated chief designer, Flavio Manzoni, once told us: “In Italy, this is the natural approach, to strive for beauty, because we grow up completely surrounded by beautiful things.”
With his latest creation, the staggering SF90 Stradale, Manzoni has truly outdone himself, because it is arguably the most attractive and exciting to look at Ferrari of all time, both inside and out.
The photos make this instantly clear, but what will ensure that this is one of the most storied cars in the company’s proud history is what it can do for your $1 million-plus (Pricing for Australia is yet to be confirmed but the local allocation has already sold out.)
With 1000 prancing horsepower, or what we would call 736kW, this will be the most powerful Ferrari yet. It will also be the fastest, with a zero to 100km/h sprint time of 2.5 seconds and a far more intimidating 0 to 200km/h figure of just 6.7 seconds – almost two seconds faster than a Lamborghini Aventador.
The secret is the Stradale’s combination of a traditional yet extraordinary V8 engine – again, Ferrari’s most powerful ever – with three electric motors in a hybrid-energy set-up that owes much to the company’s Formula One vehicles. Rather frighteningly, for something that can be driven on public roads by only nominally able humans, it will be almost as fast as an F1 car. And at least 200 times more attractive.
Mercedes-Maybach SUV
When Rolls-Royce first peeled that soft silk cover off its Cullinan, you could be forgiven for thinking we’d at last reached peak SUV. After all, who could possibly compete with the monied might of Rolls when it comes to fitting out a giant high-rider in the kind of overwhelming opulence usually reserved for the Burj Al Arab’s presidential suite.
Maybach, that’s who. Yes, the brand often associated with blinged-up rappers and powerful oligarchs is turning its attention to an SUV for the very first time, with the Mercedes-Maybach to be built in the US before hitting the global market in 2020. This one is based on the Mercedes GLS, though the Maybach version will up the luxury to a level that will surely leave the lesser Benz looking like a three-wheeled billycart.
To give you an idea of just what we’re talking about, the concept version of the car – the Vision Maybach pictured above – was rather predictably draped in pure white Nappa leather trimmed in rose gold, but somewhat less predictably it also featured a fine China tea set between the two rear seats. The pot was heated, of course, and the entire set vanished like magic beneath a real wood table at the push of a button.
While Mercedes is yet to reveal the full details, the smart money sits on the Maybach making use of AMG’s twin-turbocharged V8 engine, which should produce around 420kW of power more designed for gentle wafting than for go-fast antics.
The Maybach SUV is expected to cost north of $US200,000 in the States, but be prepared to dig a little – or a lot – deeper to land one here in Australia.