Dubai-based W Motors is fast earning itself a reputation for selling a certain sort of car to a certain sort of person. Namely hypercars to the hyper-rich, a lively trade in its domestic market. But its ambitions are broader than that niche suggests, and specifically include an 'entry-level' supercar for the merely very well-heeled.
Due out in 2019, it's intended to sit below – well below – the £1 million 800hp Ruf-engined Fenyr Supersport that recently made its dynamic debut at Goodwood, costing a much more affordable, ahem, £200,000. It’ll be a roadster and likely use a Ruf-sourced engine with, we’re guessing, around 650hp, because W Motors has had a deal to use the German firm’s motors since it launched first model, the Lykan Hypersport, back in 2013. The Italian wing of engineering firm Magna Steyr, which developed the Supersport’s chassis, could also be re-engaged to help design the new car's underpinnings.
The supporting cast make the prospect intriguing, and help dispel the idea that W Motors is aimed exclusively at Middle Eastern customers. Not convinced? Well, consider this: we could be faced with a new rival to the Ferrari 488 Spider featuring both a flat six powertrain to rival the Porsche 911 GT3 and the Italian-designed chassis to go with it. The firm expects existing production numbers togrow too, with the 25-per-year cap on Fenyr Supersports set to be tripled for the roadster.
All this was revealed to us at the Goodwood Festival of Speed by W Motors founder, Ralph Debbas, who is plotting to turn his company - which he describes as a design firm first and carmaker second - into a global brand. What’s the go-to strategy for international expansion? Launching an SUV, of course. Which is why the next car in the W Motors product plan is going to be a Lamborghini Urus rival.
Debbas said that the model, due out in 2020, would be “much more exclusive and much sportier when it comes to the material uses” compared the Urus. He explained: “it’ll have a carbonfibre bodyshell and a really interesting powertrain”, and be built in 100 to 150 units per year.
The good news though is that should it prove successful, it will help spawn a “mid-range” supercar - one priced in the half a million quid bracket and cautiously pencilled in for 2021. Debbas suggests that this would be built at the around the same pace as the SUV, and is on schedule to open a new factory in its hometown in 2020.
If all goes to plan – and the financial strength of W Motors, its consultancy division and sister companies suggests it ought to – we might even see the brand go racing. Debbas wants to use motorsport to “showcase [the firm’s] new technologies”, which will eventually include hybrid and electric powertrains. A Le Mans entry is therefore not off the cards.
With such a long list of ambitions you might think it necessary to take this all with a pinch of salt. After all, many are called but few are chosen when it comes to the fickle business of building (and then selling) very fast and very expensive cars. Still, that’s probably what they said about Koenigsegg back in the 1990s, and about Pagani and about Rimac in 2009...
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