The Apollo Intensa Emozione (IE) hypercar is just a little much. But only a little.
Around 12 years ago, a German automaker called Gumpert built a hypercar called the Apollo with the intent of making the fastest street-legal car ever made. They took many design cues from formula and Le Mans racing, used the best technology available in 2005, and came up with a car that, for a brief time, was indeed one off the fastest cars ever made.
Then Gumpert went bankrupt in the fallout of the housing market crash and global economic recession. You win some, you lose some.
Flash forward to 2017. By then, Gumpert had emerged from chapter 11 bankruptcy with a new name (Apollo, just to confuse things), and a new car: the Intensa Emozione (or IE for short). They released a teaser vid last October ahead of the car’s global debut on October 24, 2017.
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And in case you were wondering, Intensa Emozione is Italian for “Intense Emotion”. The name is fitting since everything about this car is quite intense.
To start, there’s the engine, a naturally aspirated 6.2-L V12 taken from a Ferrari F12berlinetta, according to Auto Guide. It’s been given a new ECU and some custom exhaust to output a total of 780 hp along with 560 lb⋅ft of torque. Zero to sixty is done in 2.7 seconds on its way to a top speed of 208 mph.
Unlike most hypercars that are all computer controlled, the Apollo IE comes with a Six-speed Hewland dual-clutch sequential manual transmission, making that 2.7 0-60 time all up to the fast hands of whoever is behind the wheel. This, then, is a hypercar for drivers, not tourists.
The Apollo IE manages its extreme performance thanks to being much lighter than most sports cars. A complete carbon fiber monocoque chassis weighs all of 231 lbs. The entire car weighs only 2,756 lbs, which is extremely light compared to other hypercars that have been saddled with heavy batteries on their way to hybridization.
Apollo plans to only make ten Intense Emotions, and all of them have already sold at the price of $2,670,000 a pop. So if you want one, you’ll have to steal it. At least you’ll probably be able to outrun the cops.