Hidden muscle

By Ben Lobel

There are understatements, and there is: "It's about time the US made a good supercar". Having to live in the shadows of European wondermobiles must be tough for these transatlantic friends who don't pretend to ignore the situation. Listening grudgingly to car enthusiasts wax lyrical about the latest Italian or German beast ripping up the Geneva or Paris motorshow, not to mention having to concede that Top Gear is the best thing on television, can't be healthy for the more patriotic of petrolheads over there.

Luckily, now they at least have a representative to throw into the mix. Its name is the Devon Motorworks GTX. This car's quest to prise Aston and Ferrari drivers out of their dream mobiles and into its own can easily be dismissed as fruitless, especially when said vehicle is &500,000.

But to give this vehicle a fair trial, let's look at the facts.

On first glance, you might miss the fact that the Devon GTX has the engine of a Dodge Viper. That means a gargantuan 8.4 litre V10 and eye-melting results round Laguna Seca and Willow Springs. Record breaking results, if you believe the creators. And it looks good – although the styling was done by, ahem, a Swedish designer. The result is a pleasant surprise in the sense that the car isn’t just a rebodied Viper. Unlike the Dodge, the interior is as tasteful as any European supercar. Power-wise, the GTX engine is tuned to produce 650 bhp. It shares the welded steel frame component of the chassis with the Viper but the rest is new. It’s also not in production yet. The only person to have driven the GTX is British endurance racer Justin Bell who is developing and testing the model. As mentioned, tales abound of Herculean laps of velocity that will give supercar connoisseurs reason to be interested when production starts; GTX plan to build 36 bespoke units a year. Owner Scott Devon is a fast-food magnate with a long standing desire to take on the supercar giants at their own game. Let’s hope for his sake his supercar will burn rubber better than your standard burger-flipper.

Bugatti Veyron

Because an American supercar is clearly a novelty, we weren’t sure what grounds for comparison we should use, so by default the Devon Motorworks GTX is presented to you alongside a Bugatti Veyron. Any excuse to showcase the grandest of grand tourers is good enough for us, but there are of course points of comparison. The first point of note is under the bonnet, where a similarly oversized brute of an engine resides. Secondly and most notably, there is the small matter of speed. Anything that makes the claims of the GTX in regard to bringing up the dust, has the Veyron to answer to. And there are some questions that just can’t be answered. Remember, the Bugatti has a top speed of 253 mph. It goes from 0-62 in 2.5 seconds. The small matter of price is just that to many enthusiasts – a mere $1,000,000 for simply the biggest of supercar triumphs, a car that left even Clarkson lost for words. It can’t be judged on the same level as other cars – so this comparison is perhaps unfair, not least because Americans don’t need the Bugatti to show up their supercar deficiencies, but if the star spangled GTX is told to jump, we’re saying: this high.

Fbg par Hermes

The curiously named Fbg par Hermes model appeared at the 2008 Geneva Show somewhat peerless (understandably perhaps given the name; it’s hard to have friends at this level of pompous regality). So it’s lonely at the top for the $2 million car, but the ethos of this model was the product of two minds, way back at the beginning of the 20^th century. According to the official blurb, Emile Hermes and Ettore Bugatti was a union of a prestigious Parisian saddler with a passion for cars, and an exceptional carmaker with a passion for the world of horses. This model ‘revives the historic link between Bugatti and Hermes, demonstrating the enduring power of their shared values, in the pursuit of contemporary excellence’. If that pursuit involved four turbochargers, 64 valves, and 1001 bhp, then you have to hand it to the Victorian superstars – they surely were ahead of their time in their futuristic technological vision.

There are, of course, many more notable features of this exquisite machine. The braking system is designed to deliver unprecedented powers of deceleration, establishing a new industry benchmark. The carbon-fibre discs provide brake pressure of up to 180 bars, combined with eight-piston monobloc callipers and titanium pistons fitted with fine steel heads and ceramic heat protectors. Apply the brakes at speeds above 200 km/h, and the rear wing acts as an airbrake, positioning itself at an angle of 113 degrees in less than 0.4 seconds, augmenting the Bugatti Veyron's already impressive stopping power. The airbrake increases negative lift at the rear of the car to 300 kg, enhancing the braking torque on the rear axle. At 400 km/h, emergency braking will bring the sports car to a complete halt in less than 10 seconds. If you have a spare 2 million bucks, the car is available now.