When the Rimac Nevera was launched, it made headlines for its huge power figures and the remarkable way it builds speed. Now, it’s set to be featured on the next series of Top Gear and host Chris Harris says that other hypercars should be humbled.
In an interview hosted by the Top Gear digital team, Chris Harris gives us a preview of what’s coming for the video, and just how deeply the Rimac Nevera, whose progress he says he’s been tracking for years, has changed his idea of what a hypercar can do.
“What I will say about the Nevera is that it’s so fast that the 10th time you do a full-bore start, your body still goes ‘What’s going on here, why would that happen?'” he says. “So there’s a level of performance, I think, you reach where the party trick doesn’t get tiresome. But maybe it’s at 1,900 hp and two million quid.”
Read: Jay Leno Drives The Rimac Nevera For The First Time
That’s not to say that the Rimac Nevera is perfect, however. Harris says that, as an exercise in speed and technology, the Nevera will humble other hypercars on the road. Without a loud, multicylinder engine to rev, though, there may be a problem for the people who actually buy hypercars.
“The problem is, if you want to be a peacock in a Nevera, the only thing you’ve got at your disposal is speed and if you try and demonstrate that in a built-up area, you’re just going to end up in a shopfront,” says Harris. “And so this is going to be interesting. How are people going to show off at low speed in these cars? The peacockery of low speed hypercar move is going to have to be sorted out by someone because that’s what they need these people.”
Despite that, Harris reckons that the figures, where the Rimac is peerless, will help it (and its ilk) take over the world of hypercars. The power and acceleration stats that can be generated by an EV are so wild that conventional cars can’t keep up.
“The existential threat that electric supercars, hypercars pose to their predecessors and how we feel about them remains because the world still wants to judge cars by how fast they are,” Harris says. “Those headlines figures will always be the thing that get you and I juicy. You can’t resist but going ‘Oh it does naught to sixty’ and all of that. And we all know it’s meaningless, but we’re still seduced by the numbers. And these cars will continue to seduce. They’re so fast, you can’t get over the numbers.”