Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Gumpert Apollo



The Gumpert Apollo (pronounced gum-pair-h) is the first supercar produced by Gumpert Sportwagenmanufaktur GmbH in Germany. The project is the creation of Roland Gumpert, a former Audi employee who oversaw many a rallying success working as competitions chief in their Quattro division. Gumpert’s partner is Roland Mayer, the boss of German tuning house MTM.



The Apollo is a 1100kg, street-legal race car with up to 650hp and 627 lb/ft of torque, designed to take on the Porsche 911 GT3, it is a mid engined, rear wheel drive two seater constructed on a tubular Chromoly frame, with fiberglass or carbon fiber body panels. An Audi 4.2L V8 engine is joined to a six-speed sequential gearbox with Formula 1 influences. Estimated top speed is 360 km/h (224mph) with 0-100km/h (0–62 mph) reached in 3.0 seconds, making it the 9th best accelerating production car in the world, behind the Ariel Atom. Prices start at 198,000 EUR / £190,000 GBP / $380,000 USD, and Gumpert hopes to produce 150 Apollo’s between 2005 and 2008.

Gumpert claims the car has as much downforce as any car that would run in the DTM German touring car championship, it produces an astonishing 1500kg of downforce at 330km/h, enough to allow the car to drive on the ceiling without falling off.