I don’t know about you, but I find myself with an acute case of supercar startup fatigue these days. Of course, automotive history is littered with the dreams of hotshot entrepreneurs all vying to deliver the most extreme, stunning, or revolutionary car ever conceived. But the sheer quantity of them in the 2020s, coupled with the diminishing gains of four-digit horsepower figures and instant acceleration, has dampened my enthusiasm. Who really cares if a car’s a tenth quicker to 60 mph when we’re already dealing under two seconds? It’s a cynicism that’s hard to quit, but now and then, something comes along that does. Today, that car is the Nilu Hypercar.
Built by the oddly-named Nilu27 (that’s the brand, not the car), it’s the product of Sasha Selipanov, a designer who’s made a career penning models for boutique marques like Bugatti and Koenigsegg. The Nilu Hypercar packs a 1,055-horsepower, 6.5-liter V12—naturally aspirated, of course—with an 11,000-rpm redline, connected to a seven-speed gated manual. The V12 is built by Hartley Engines of New Zealand, a company run by the brother of Le Mans winner Brendon Hartley. Not unlike Gordon Murray’s T.50 or the Aston Martin Valiant, this is an old-school exotic in the most traditional sense. But it’s Nilu27’s design that stopped me in my tracks.
OK, those classic five-spokes are doing some lifting—they never fail on anything. But Nilu’s hypercar pulls cues from a range of elegant ultra-high-end metal, new and old, and the final result just works. The canopy evokes the LaFerrari, while the swooping side intakes call to mind the DeTomaso P72, itself a modern take on the legendary Ferrari 330 P4 prototype.
It’s from the back, though, that I think the best impression’s made. With the white paint, exposed engine, and those prominent exhaust pipes (12-into-1 headers, by the way), my brain immediately goes to 1984’s Peugeot Quasar, an underrated concept from the heyday of Group B rally racing. I’d love to think Selipanov was in some form inspired by the Quasar because history shouldn’t forget it. It was an all-terrain, all-wheel-drive menace powered by the 205 T16’s engine tuned to make 600 hp, for crying out loud.
Anyway, back to Nilu. Selipanov told Autocar his brand isn’t about numbers, which is still somewhat hard to swallow given the hypercar’s 1,000-plus horsepower and 2,645-pound dry curb weight. But, as you’d imagine with a gated shifter front and center, this machine is about pleasure more than record-shattering performance. The images here are merely renders, but the real thing is due to make its public debut next week at Pebble Beach; Nilu27 will start with 15 track-only units before making 54 street-legal ones, all for a price that has not yet been disclosed.
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