Now this is how you create an excellent - and mysterious - teaser photo. The scene is dark and there’s only that sight of the shadow of an unmistakable supercar growling in the darkness, waiting to bust out its fangs and unleash holy hell on the entire auto industry.
This, dear friends, is a teaser photo released by Gumpert announcing the arrival of an all-new supercar that’s scheduled to be unveiled at the 2012 Geneva Auto Show. Details behind this mysterious machine are still being kept under wraps and the only thing we really have going for us are these foreboding photos.
What the car will look like, what it’s going to be called, and what’s it going to be like are all questions that nobody has an answer to just yet.
But if there’s one thing that we can take away from this mysterious teaser photo, it’s the ever-growing realization from some of the world’s fastest cars that their worst nightmare is out there lurking in the shadows.
And it’s coming soon. Very, very soon.
UPDATE 01/04/12: The countdown towards the 2012 Geneva Motor Show has begun. One car that’s shaping up to be one of the most highly anticipated is the new supercar to come from Gumpert. The car is being pegged as the successor to the mighty Apollo and though we don’t have any details on it, the automaker has satiated our appetites by dropping the second teaser photo of the car. It doesn’t show much, but it’s still something that has raised a lot of eyebrows.
When people drive fast vehicles at high speeds, accidents are bound to happen. When these people happen to be professional Formula One race car drivers, the numbers of accidents decrease, but still exist. Just ask German F1 driver, Adrian Sutil, who had a little trouble keeping the Gumpert Apollo steady during some testing at the Nurburgring.
Apparently, Sutil was in the middle of testing when he lost control and crashed the Apollo. The Apollo escaped with just a few repairs, but apparently Sutil suffered a few broken teeth. No other injuries were reported.
As a reminder, the Gumpert Apollo is powered by a 4.2-liter bi-turbo 8-cylinder engine and weighs in at around 2400 lbs. It can sprint from 0 to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds and can hit a top speed of 225 mph. Apparently, it’s a little more difficult to keep a 700 HP supercar at bay than it is a Formula One car. Okay, not even we believe that, but we’re sure the F1 cars have more safety devices in place just in case an accident does occur.
“It has always been a dream of mine to have a car that has so much downforce, such aerodynamic efficiency that you could drive on the roof of a tunnel at high speed - and this car can.”
These were the words of Roland Gumpert a little over a decade ago when he was fresh of leaving his job as the director of Audi Sport. During his tenure with the Ingolstadt-based automaker, he oversaw a team that won a total of 25 World Rally Championship races and four World Rally Championship titles.
In 2004, Gumpert officially founded GMG Sportwagenmanufaktur Altenburg GmbH in Altenburg, Germany, thus paving the way for the birth of one of the most exotic niche German supercars of the past decade: the Gumpert Apollo. Since it’s debut in 2006, Gumpert has developed four different versions of the Apollo, including the recently debuted 2010 Apollo Sport that made its first appearance at last year’s Geneva Auto Show.
In the six years since its debut, Gumpert has gone from the Apollo to the 2010 Apollo Sport, an impressive run of supercars that has become a fashionable name in the industry, giving Gumpert all the validation he needed when he said that he wanted to build his own supercar on his own terms.
Just in case you’ve forgotten about this 800-horsepower blue devil, You Tube’s Marchettino has gone ahead and released a video of the incomparable Gumpert Apollo doing what it does best in its natural habitat: hitting up the Monza circuit in Italy for a couple of flying laps.
According to Marchettino, this particular Apollo is the only one of its kind in Italy, a bit surprising considering that the country is well known for having some of the fastest and most powerful machines on the planet. Be that as it may, watching the Apollo run roughshod over Monza reminded us just how fast and powerful this German wonder car really is.
Be advised that the ‘standard’ – looser words have never been spoken - Gumpert Apollo is powered by an Audi-sourced 4.2-liter bi-turbo V8 engine that produces 650 horsepower with the Sport trim checking out at 700 horsepower.
This particular model, though, has been modified to produce a staggering 800 horsepower and as the video clearly shows you, all that power coming out from the Apollo is definitely a sight to behold.
The German supercar maker, Gumpert, is adding a new two-seater Tourer model to their lineup, and has debuted it at the 2011 Geneva Motor Show. The Tornante will be based on a new central engine chassis and V8-powered drivetrain, and will be designed by Touring Superleggera. This model will be setting a new standard for Gumpert as high-end engineering, sportiness, and elegance will come together to join the street-legal performance of the Apollo. The Touring designed Tornante will feature composite body panels placed on a space frame and a carbon fiber monocoque. These elements will allow the Tornante to be much more spacious than the Apollo.
Call us crazy, but it doesn’t seem as if the exterior design for the Tornante is all that different from the Apollo. The biggest difference we can see is the open top on the concept, which led us to believe that the gullwing doors would be eliminated from the overall design, however Gumpert has been editing multiple parts of the design to incorporate even larger Gullwing doors than ever before. During product development stages Gumpert wanted to utilize the expertise that TOURING designers have been putting into their cars for many years. According to Gumpert, the synergies between the two companies led to a great relationship, “teams from the two companies discovered soon that they share the same respect for efficiency and essentiality.”
This team has been able to develop a new model for the limited Gumpert lineup and been able to use many parts from the Apollo at the same time. This does not mean that the two cars are the same in any respect- rather Gumpert knew that it had to change several key factors in the new model in order to expand their customer base and please the requests of Apollo owners. Most of these upgrades or changes have to do with creature comforts and driveability. Let’s be honest, you’re not going to be driving your Apollo to work everyday, it’s basically a race car for the street. Gumpert wanted to revise this aspect of the car and include more storage space and improve comfort, but not compromise performance.
UPDATE 03/02/2011: This review has been updated with the Tornante Tourer’s official specs, as well as some new images!
More details on the Gumpert Tornante by Touring after the jump.
