The $1.2 Million Fenyr SuperSport Is the New 800-HP Bruiser on the Block
Meet the first Middle Eastern supercar.
Most of us were introduced to W Motors when its hand-built Lykan HyperSport leapt from one building to the next in Furious 7. The Dubai-based company has matured to the point of introducing a new production model, the $1.2 million Fenyr SuperSport, which sat placidly on the show floor at the Geneva International Motor Show.
Fenyr continues the wolf theme of W Motors—that’s what the ‘W’ stands for. Fenyr was the monstrous wolf son of Loki in Norse mythology, explained company chairman and CEO Ralph Debbas in an exclusive Maxim interview.
W Motors debuted the concept version of the Fenyr in 2015, but styling mock-ups are a far cry from production-ready machines, Debbas pointed out. “The concept car was done to show the aesthetics,” he said. “But there was no aerodynamic work or engineering in the concept, so there was a lot of safety engineering to be done.”
Debbas has a masters degree in automotive design from Coventry University. He is smart enough to know what he doesn’t know. So for the hard work of what Elon Musk has discovered at Tesla Motors is “production hell,” W Motors has turned to the experts at Magna Steyr. That’s the company that builds cars under contract for the likes of Mercedes-Benz (G-Wagen), BMW (5-Series) and Jaguar (E-Pace and I-Pace).
The expectation is that with the experts at Magna doing the assembly in their Turin, Italy, plant, “the car will be perfect from day one,” Debbas said. W Motors plans to sell a total of 100 Fenyrs, at the rate of 25 per year for each of the next four years.
The Fenyr is designed to stand out from the field of increasingly similar limited production hypercars. The most notable aspect is its use of a Porsche-style twin-turbocharged 3.8-liter flat six-cylinder engine producing 800 horsepower, so the Fenyr will howl with the voice of a 911 Turbo.
That engine and the seven-speed dual-clutch PDK transaxle are provided by legendary Porsche specialists RUF Automobile, again lending serious credibility to this project.
That engine sits ahead of the rear axle, as with the Porsche 911 RSR, but unlike regular 911s, which locate it behind the axle. This drivetrain produces formidable performance, blasting the Fenyr to 62 mph in 2.7 seconds and to a top speed of 245 mph.
The Porsche-inspired drivetrain is just one part of W Motors’ goal of providing a modern hypercar that delivers the sensations that sparked enthusiasts’ love for performance cars in the first place, according to Debbas. “The are modern machines with a touch of humanity,” he said. “You hear every mechanical part of the car. We don’t hide it.”
If that sounds like a motto for a successful supercar, the self-proclaimed “first Middle Eastern supercar” is ready for you to join the eleven other customers who’ve already pre-ordered a Fenyr.
