The first edition of Spear’s was published in 2006. To mark the 20th anniversary, our latest issue chronicles the 100 moments that have shaped the world of wealth since then, from the collapse of Lehman Brothers to the rise of ‘Old Money Style’. This article is part of Spear’s chronicle of the last 20 years in the world of wealth, published in full exclusively in Issue 101.
When the 23-year-old Mate Rimac unveils his 1088bhp electric Concept One at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2011, little does he realise his tiny Croatian start-up would ignite a horsepower arms race that would reshape the supercar industry for the next decade.
Rimac’s timing is perfect. Formula E arrives in 2014, lending EV performance some sporting credibility, and a year later Dieselgate detonates like a grenade in the German car industry. Politics and boardroom sentiment shift.
By 2018 VW-owned Porsche is investing in Rimac while announcing the Taycan, its first EV, signalling that one of the world’s great sports-car manufacturers believes in batteries. Lotus unveils its 2000bhp Evija, followed by new EVs from Pininfarina, NIO and Faraday. Every month it seems a brand you’d never heard of unveils an electric hypercar with a power output bigger than Sizewell B.
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The numbers provide some perspective. When Fernando Alonso won the 2006 F1 championship with Renault, his R26 produced around 750bhp. A decade later the industry was proposing to hand ordinary millionaires more than 2000bhp and hope the software could sort out the consequences.
But then, common sense was a rare commodity in 2020. That was the year Tesla overtook Toyota to become the world’s most valuable carmaker – despite Toyota selling 30 times more cars.
And yet, while the industry raced towards this electric future, Mate Rimac’s story was taking a different turn. In 2021, Porsche invested in a new Bugatti Rimac joint venture and put the Croat entrepreneur in the cockpit as CEO.
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Three years later, the first all-new Bugatti under his watch arrived, not as a silent EV but with a naturally aspirated V16. The man who ignited the electric hypercar revolution sent a signal: the internal combustion was not dead yet.
By 2025, the electric supercar dream had dissolved into delayed projects and some carefully chosen corporate language.
Deliveries slipped, start-ups stumbled and EV demand cooled. For Porsche it proved catastrophic: Taycan residuals had dropped like a lead battery down a well, and suddenly the automotive industry’s biggest bet in a century looked like it was built on optimism rather than old-fashioned supply and demand. The mood had already changed when Porsche announced a €3.9 billion write-down as part of what it called a ‘strategic realignment’.
[See also: Bugatti’s CEO on the V16 Tourbillon and ‘doing everything from scratch’]
The mistake wasn’t technical. The manufacturers had just forgotten a basic truth: nobody buys a superyacht with a spreadsheet. No one buys a Patek Philippe because it’s the most accurate way to tell the time. Supercars belong to the same category of beautifully irrational purchases: customers spending £2 million on a supercar aren’t buying battery chemistry or thermal management – or even the vomit-inducing acceleration. They’re buying theatre, not science.
Which is why Ferrari’s 2026 launches are so revealing. When its first EV is finally unveiled, instead of another 2,000bhp electric wedge, it is the four-door Luce.
The internet explodes, but arguably Ferrari has read the room better than everyone else – no one wants an electric supercar after all. And then there’s the new Ferrari 12Cilindri Manuale, featuring a real V12 engine and a fake manual gearbox – the metal gearstick simply prods the automatic shift. Try explaining that on a spreadsheet.
