This past week has been chock-full of mesmerizing reveals from Monterey Car Week, with plenty of hypercars raising the bar for performance once again. It was also an opportunity for some niche automakers to show the well-heeled a glimpse of their future plans, which Danish hypercar company Zenvo teased would be part of its attraction at The Quail.
The automaker has been offering the zany Zenvo TSR-S for a few years now, and it's time for something new. Last year, the company said that it was working on a new car based on the platform of the TSR-S, but now a new report from Top Gear has revealed that the next Zenvo monster will get a brand-new modular carbon fiber chassis, as well as a new V12 and other updated components.
As we mentioned above, the design was only teased to prospective customers at last week's event, but there's plenty of technical info to whet our appetites until the design is finalized and made public. The company's chairman and chief commercial officer, Jens Sverdrup, says that, along with the new chassis, the next Zenvo hypercar will feature a new, modular V12 engine with two electric turbochargers and "massive" preheated cats. On its own, the engine is said to be capable of producing 1,200 horsepower, but the target is somewhere above 1,500, and the most extreme iteration could manage 1,800 horses. This will be paired with an electric motor, with a new eight-speed automatic gearbox handling shifts. The chassis, engine, gearbox, and electric drivetrain will be designed and built in-house.
Despite those enormous performance figures, Svedrup says that Zenvo is not building "numbers cars" that are only attractive because of their ridiculous output. After all, most of the major players in the hypercar niche have a 1,000-plus-hp hypercar on sale. Instead, Zenvo will create cars that deliver "smiles per mile."
The report explains that two versions of the new car are being developed, with the first set to be a grand touring hybrid, possibly with an electric motor on the front axle for all-wheel drive, but this is still being discussed internally. The other car will be more hardcore and track-focused, albeit road-legal, and will produce plenty of downforce. In its lightest iteration, the new hypercar aims to weigh just 2,756 pounds. That's well below the 3,100-lb dry weight of the Hennessey Venom F5 Roadster, so the potential for a high-speed record would be there if Zenvo wanted it.
It's unclear what Zenvo has planned that will make the new cars stand out, but the Danish company hasn't been afraid to experiment in the past. The TSR-S has the craziest moving wing ever fitted to a car, but that party trick was only ever exciting for those who saw it in action, not the driver.
The "centripetal wing" has been criticized by engineers and racers who have noted that the wing's intended effect of increasing the lateral movement of downforce actually hurts handling, as the outside tires are leaned on with less force, which in turn means they provide less grip. There's also the issue of how the front end of the car is not receiving matching aerodynamic alterations, which is not great for high-speed balance and control. Finally, the wing reduces overall downforce.
Hopefully, the new Zenvo will be more than just a fire-prone gimmick.