Lamborghini, Bugatti and Aston Martin chose The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, to show new hypercars on Friday 14 August, at The Quail Golf Club in Carmel Valley, California. The Lamborghini Revuelto SV made its official debut there, alongside Bugatti’s one-off Destrier and the Aston Martin Valen, a car limited to 150 examples. The event’s top prize, meanwhile, went to a car built 69 years earlier: a 1957 Ferrari.
The Quail is a ticket-limited event held on the Friday of Monterey Car Week, the August gathering on California’s Monterey Peninsula that also brings the Pebble Beach Concours and auctions that set records this year. Over the years its lawns have become a launch stage for hypercars, the rare and extremely fast cars built in small numbers at prices well above those of ordinary supercars.
Among the cars on show was the Lucid Gravity GT-S, an electric SUV from a company with close ties to Saudi Arabia, which gave the day a Gulf thread.
A 1957 Ferrari takes the top prize
The Rolex Circle of Champions, The Quail’s Best of Show award, went to the American collector Bruce Meyer’s 1957 Ferrari 625/250 Testarossa, according to Il Sole 24 Ore. The silver barchetta, an open two-seat racing car, has a body by Scaglietti and was originally commissioned by John von Neumann.
It won 11 races in 1957, the Italian newspaper reports, and was later fitted with the 3-litre V12 from the 250 Testa Rossa. On a day of new launches, the highest honour went to a car with a full racing record behind it.
Lamborghini’s two V12s
The Revuelto SV is a more focused version of Lamborghini’s flagship. SV, for Super Veloce, is a name the brand has long given to its most extreme models. The car’s hybrid V12 produces about 1,065 CV, the metric measure of horsepower used by Italian makers, and Motor1 reports that a prototype lapped Germany’s Hockenheimring in 1 minute 41.6 seconds. Lamborghini now lists the car on its website.
The Revuelto itself, launched in 2023, was Lamborghini’s first plug-in hybrid V12 flagship. A day before The Quail, on 13 August, the brand showed another version at its Lamborghini Lounge: the Revuelto Miura 60° Homage. It marks 60 years since the original Miura was revealed in 1966. It is limited to 99 cars, offered in nine colours inspired by the Miura and powered by the 1,001 hp plug-in hybrid V12.
One Bugatti, 150 Aston Martins
Bugatti’s Destrier is a single car. It is a road-legal one-off based on the Bolide, a track-only model, and the third car of Programme Solitaire, under which Bugatti builds no more than two cars a year for individual clients. It uses an 8.0-litre W16 engine with four turbochargers, producing 1,578 hp (1,600 CV), and it stands about one metre tall.
According to Il Sole 24 Ore, the Aston Martin Valen is derived from the Vanquish and uses a twin-turbo V12 of about 850 CV. Production is limited to 150 cars, priced from about £1.5 million. Aston Martin also announced three one-off DB12 S Tribute cars from Q by Aston Martin, its personalisation service, honouring the Pebble Beach Concours and the DB2 race cars of the early 1950s.
Engines for purists
Several of the other new cars made a point of their engines and gearboxes. McLaren’s McL 6GT, a concept close to production, pairs a V8 with a manual gearbox, and a production version is due in 2028. The first prototype of the Hennessey Blackbird, listed by Motor1 among the week’s debuts, has a 6.2-litre V8 without turbochargers and a six-speed manual gearbox. Seventy-one are due to be built at $2.5 million each, with production starting in 2029.
At the other extreme, the Zenvo Aurora pairs a 6.6-litre V12 with four turbochargers, developed with Mahle Powertrain, with electric assistance. The engine alone makes 1,250 CV, and the total rises to as much as 1,850 CV. The Czinger 21C Spyder also makes 1,250 CV and reaches 330 km/h; 30 will be built, at $2.75 million each.
Older designs had their say too. Porsche showed the 911 “Flachbau RS”, built by Sonderwunsch, its programme for individual commissions, on the basis of the 911 GT2 RS. The Eccentrica V12 Roadster is a restomod, a classic car rebuilt with modern engineering, based on the first-generation Lamborghini Diablo. It is an open-top car with a 5.7-litre V12 of 550 hp, limited to 19 examples.
The Saudi connection
The Lucid Gravity GT-S is a seven-seat electric SUV with 1,070 CV. It accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in 3.1 seconds and is priced at $127,750 in the United States.
For Gulf readers, the car carries a particular interest. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund invested in Lucid in 2018, and Lucid built the kingdom’s first car plant, according to Semafor.
The rest of the line-up speaks to collectors across the region who follow limited-run V12 and W16 cars closely. The Quail’s lesson this year was a simple one: the fastest new cars are still made in tiny numbers, and they still compete for attention with the great cars of the past. On 14 August, the past won.
Sources: Automobili Lamborghini, Il Sole 24 Ore, Motor1, Semafor