Zenvo. Sounds like one of those newfangled Chinese EV brands making the rounds internationally these days, doesn’t it?But we assure you, it is not.The brand is 100 per cent Danish; its name is a loose portmanteau of those of its co-founders, Jesper Jensen and Troels Vollertsen. The duo established the company in 2007 as Nordic Sports Car A/S before rebranding it two years later with the launch of its first prototype, the Zenvo STI.In 2018, the company was sold to Czech investors. Vollertsen remains Chief Technical Officer (CTO) alongside Jens Sverdrup, who joined a year later as chairman and Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) to steer Zenvo through "a new chapter".Enter the Aurora, named after the Northern Lights, of course."We're not reinventing the hypercar, just making a better one," Sverdrup said during our chat at the private lounge of the Wearnes Bonded Gallery, an exclusive, climate-controlled car storage facility in Singapore for exotic and classic cars.
The Zenvo Aurora combines a quad-turbocharged 6.6-litre V12 with three electric motors, producing up to 1,850bhp in its most powerful guise. (Photo: Zenvo)
With Wearnes Automotive as its local partner, Zenvo is on a global tour introducing the Aurora ahead of its production and global rollout in 2027, with stops in New York, Montreal and Nashville already completed."Singapore is an important market for Zenvo, with a highly knowledgeable community of collectors and enthusiasts who appreciate rare, highly engineered automobiles, and bringing the Aurora to Singapore is an important milestone," Sverdrup said.THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL V12?Even petrolheads might need a moment to wrap their heads around the fact that a Danish car brand is behind what's billed as the world's most powerful V12-engined hypercar when first deliveries arrive next year.After all, the Danes have always excelled at design, just usually outside the automotive world. Until now.The Aurora, which has a base price of €2.8 million (US$3.19 million; S$4.13 million), before taxes and options, is powered by a newly developed 6.6-litre quad-turbocharged V12 engine designed from the ground up in partnership with MAHLE Powertrain. The engine, laid out in a 90-degree hot-V configuration, is mounted behind the cockpit and produces 1,250bhp up to its 9,800rpm redline.That makes it one of the most powerful V12 engines ever fitted to a road car, second only to Aston Martin's Valkyrie. And we haven't even talked about the power boost from its electric motors yet."For me, the V12 is the ultimate," said Sverdrup. "It's the way it feels emotionally. If we were only looking for performance, we would have made a twin-turbo V8 and probably had the same power and better track performance. But it's the way the V12 sounds at almost 10,000rpm; it's amazing."Two distinct two-seater variants have been planned: the Agil and the Tur. The former is a lightweight, track-focused – yet road-legal – rear-wheel-drive machine, while the latter is a more elegant four-wheel-drive grand tourer."An iron fist in a velvet glove," is how Chief Designer Christian Brandt described the Tur's beautifully sculpted bodywork draped over its complex aerodynamic skeletal structure.
