Apollo Intensa Emozione

Jowyn Wong designed the IE, and he went on to draw the De Tomaso P72 for the same owner, which is the only way two cars this different can share a hand. Where the P72 is a period homage, the IE is aerodynamic function turned theatrical. Nothing on it is decorative. The body is carbon fibre over a 105kg Capricorn monocoque, with high-strength steel, aluminium and titanium components, and the surfaces exist to move air: vast side intakes, a full-width rear wing, a deep diffuser and channels cut through the bodywork rather than around it. At 5,066mm long and 1,130mm tall, the proportions are those of a sports prototype rather than a road car. The signature decision is leaving the engine bay open. There is no engine cover, so the V12 and its induction sit exposed for cooling and air, and the mechanical heart of the car is on permanent display. The name is Italian for intense emotion, and the design brief was an object that provokes a reaction before it moves. On that measure it works, and it is the reason a badge nobody recognises still stops a paddock.

The IE has no competition record, and there is a clear reason: it was built as a track car with no series to enter. Ten road-registered cars cannot satisfy any GT homologation requirement, no customer racing programme was set up around it, and by 2017 endurance racing's prototype and GT classes were closed structures requiring manufacturer-scale commitment. The hardware, however, has racing parentage throughout. The carbon monocoque was made by Capricorn Group, a motorsport composites supplier. Chassis setup and final assembly were done by HWA AG, the Affalterbach motorsport engineering firm, which also did engine development work with Autotecnica Motori. The gearbox is a Hewland sequential. The V12 is Ferrari's F140, the family that powered the Enzo and its descendants. The lineage reaches further back than the car itself. Apollo exists because Roland Gumpert, previously director of Audi Sport, built the original Apollo in 2005 after a career running a factory competition department. The IE inherited all of that engineering culture and never entered a race.

The IE's public life has been thin by design and the cars are rarely seen, which is what building ten of something means. Its widest exposure has come through games rather than roads: it appeared in Forza Motorsport 7, its first console outing, and in CSR Racing 2 and the Asphalt series, where it has ranked among the fastest cars in the game. Its second moment came at auction. When Bonhams offered Ocean Dragon at The Quail in August 2025, it was the first Intensa Emozione ever presented publicly for sale, and the 3,442,500 dollar result made news well beyond the specialist press. Beyond that, the IE occupies a strange cultural position. It is the successor to a car, the Gumpert Apollo, that is genuinely famous among a generation of gamers and Top Gear viewers, and the IE has neither that recognition nor that name. Ten cars carrying a badge most people do not know, built by a company most people cannot place, is a very particular kind of obscurity.

Ten cars, most of them barely driven, means the ownership question is about preservation rather than wear. The Bonhams example had covered 340 miles in three years. A naturally aspirated race-derived V12 with a Hewland sequential gearbox is not improved by sitting still: fuel goes off, seals dry, tyres age out long before they wear out, and batteries and fluids need a schedule that has nothing to do with mileage. Everything on the car is a specialist item. The carbon monocoque came from Capricorn, the engine work from Autotecnica Motori and HWA, and final assembly from HWA at Affalterbach, so a straightforward job means talking to a motorsport engineering firm rather than a service department. Body panels are made in batches of ten. The F140 engine family is the one piece of good news, being a well-understood Ferrari V12 in wide use, though the IE's own calibration and induction are unique to it. Owners who use their cars keep them commissioned and sorted; the ones that sit are the ones that need work.