Geneva shows new German Gumpert

The Tornante has a 520kW bi-turbo 4.2-litre V8 Audi engine and Tiptronic gearbox with paddle shifters.
Neil Dowling

Contributing Journalist

1 min read

The two-seat, mid-engined rocket is the proposed second road-going model from German-based Gumpert - which if you hadn't noticed is also a strange name - after its Apollo and a line of track cars.

The Tornante - it's Italian for a "hairpin bend" - gets a 520kW bi-turbo 4.2-litre V8 Audi engine and Tiptronic gearbox with paddle shifters.

The body is by Touring Superleggera which means it looks sexy and has that firm's lightweight chrome-moly steel space frame, carbon-fibre spine and composite body panel design.

Roland Gumpert - previously a top executive with Audi in China - retains a strong link with Audi and exclusively uses its drivetrains.

Gumpert Sportwagenmanufaktur was started in 2004 and uses the technical assistance of Audi, the Technical University of Munich and the Ingolstadt University of Applied Sciences.

They have assisted with the construction, computer simulations and wind tunnel tests.

Gumpert has made a hybrid version of the Apollo and will in 2012 repeat the exercise using the Tornante as the donor car.

Neil Dowling

Contributing Journalist

GoAutoMedia Cars have been the corner stone to Neil’s passion, beginning at pre-school age, through school but then pushed sideways while he studied accounting. It was rekindled when he started contributing to magazines including Bushdriver and then when he started a motoring section in Perth’s The Western Mail. He was then appointed as a finance writer for the evening Daily News, supplemented by writing its motoring column. He moved to The Sunday Times as finance editor and after a nine-year term, finally drove back into motoring when in 1998 he was asked to rebrand and restyle the newspaper’s motoring section, expanding it over 12 years from a two-page section to a 36-page lift-out. In 2010 he was selected to join News Ltd’s national motoring group Carsguide and covered national and international events, launches, news conferences and Car of the Year awards until November 2014 when he moved into freelancing, working for GoAuto, The West Australian, Western 4WDriver magazine, Bauer Media and as an online content writer for one of Australia’s biggest car groups. He has involved himself in all aspects including motorsport where he has competed in everything from motocross to motorkhanas and rallies including Targa West and the ARC Forest Rally. He loves all facets of the car industry, from design, manufacture, testing, marketing and even business structures and believes cars are one of the few high-volume consumables to combine a very high degree of engineering enlivened with an even higher degree of emotion from its consumers.
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