Zenvo. Danish Supercar madness

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The Zenvo ST1 is the fruit of five years worth of hard work by Jesper Jenson and Troels Vollertsen and the rest of the small team that works for Zenvo – Denmark’s first supercar company. It’s an all-new model built on its own platform and is powered by a bespoke 7.0-litre GM V8 engine.The alloy lump is turbo- and supercharged to a heady 1104bhp and 1055lb ft of torque. This twin-charging setup is similar to what VW does on the Golf GT – though naturally, with a little more potency.What this means in real terms is that the V8 doesn’t suffer from any lag – plant the throttle and away it goes. With all of that power on tap, it’s really not recommended trying any sort of rapid getaway in first gear – you’ll roast those fat 335mm Michelins in no time.There’s still plenty of wheelspin in second if you’re not too careful with the power. To try and make the ST1 a little easier to live with on the day-to-day grind, Zenvo has set up the car with three power maps – 650bhp for wet conditions, 850bhp for normal, and the full 1104bhp in Sport mode.

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You can shift between each of the power modes on the move via a stubby control wheel on the carbon centre console. Carbon is the material of choice in the ST1 as it features a full carbon body built over a steel chassis.

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The steering is reasonably communicative as to what’s going on under the front 19” wheels and is remarkably lacking in chatter when tanking along at high speeds. You could really drive this car everyday, even the race clutch is easy to modulate at the biting point.

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The sheer excessiveness of the power is best demonstrated from around 100kph. Once underway in the baby 650bhp power mode, I shift into third and plant the throttle. The ST1 surges ahead with plenty of vigour that’s for sure, but crank two turns on the selector knob and – oh my word, this is fast. It’s so fast that the digital heads-up display can’t keep up. I’m limited to a maximum speed of 250kph in this final engineering prototype – 375kph is the official claimed top speed.

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If that number looks a little down compared to the Veyron’s 407kph, that’s because it is. Zenvo intentionally didn’t want to chase massive top speeds with the ST1 as it would have caused massive headaches for the engineering team as all the components would have to be designed to withstand the massive forces encountered at those speeds. And anyway, Zenvo claims that no-one ever drives at those sorts of speeds anyway – it’s more just fodder for Top Trumps.

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Zenvo is trying its hardest to keep the ST1 as exclusive as possible, so they won’t budge on that 15 build run. They’ve already sold four cars to locals customers after the car was shown at the Dubai Motor Show at the end of 2009. Though, three of those buyers have requested to have paddleshifting automatic gearboxes fitted otherwise they won’t sign the cheque.

Although this goes against the wishes of chief engineer Troels Vollertsen who had hoped to sell all cars with the six-speed manual gearbox – sourced from Ricardo – the small company can’t turn away potential business. Therefore, it’s teaming up with UK firm Xtrac to fit a six-speed automatic gearbox – complete with the required paddleshifts. The ST1 wasn’t developed with the automatic ‘box in mind as when work started on the car back in 2004 there was no suitable gearbox.

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Whilst the Zenvo ST1 might not be a technical tour-de-force like the Veyron, nor as beautifully finished as a Pagani – the interior particularly doesn’t feel like it should live in a $1,300,000 car – it’s still an impressive achievement for what’s essentially been put together by a bunch of blokes in a Danish warehouse.

Bugatti Veyron or Zenvo ST1. Which would you rather have? Let us know below.