The Aurora’s engine has been designed to be as configurable as possible
Danish hypercar maker says it has customers for cars with smaller engines derived from new V12 Aurora
Zenvo could consider building a “junior hypercar” based on the new ZM1 monocoque used by the newly revealed V12 Aurora.
The Danish brand’s chief commercial officer, Jens Sverdrup, told Autocar the platform is “fully” modular, implying that components used on the 1850bhp Aurora – revealed last week at Monterey Car Week as a 280mph successor to the ST1 and TSR – could be swapped for a less exotic material in order to cut costs.
These interchangeable components could include the Aurora’s carbonfibre subframes.
“Theoretically, we could build an off-road vehicle like a hyper-SUV, but only theoretically: I don’t think that will happen,” Sverdrup said, hinting at the platform’s flexibility.
The mammoth 6.6-litre quad-turbocharged V12 engine in the Aurora has been designed to be as configurable as possible, said Sverdrup, raising the possibility of it being downsized into V6 and V8 formats. Their displacements would presumably scale linearly, giving displacements of 3.3 litres and 4.4 litres respectively.
“We have some customers for V6s and V8s derived from this car, that we might use in the future, if we want to do a junior hypercar, for example.”
However, the likelihood that development of a new model will begin “all depends on the demand from customers”.
Sverdrup said Zenvo’s Præstø facility could support production of 25 Auroras annually – which would complete the hypercar’s 100-unit run in four years – but that “some tweaks” would be needed to boost it further.
For example, he identified the lack of paint booths as a “bottleneck” and noted that 1000 man hours were needed to paint a single car.
The firm does intend to build a new plant with greater capacity “at some stage”, but it will take “a few” years before such work can begin.
