The Dane creates the hurricane hypercars Zenvo ST1, and he drives a Niva

Tiny Denmark has managed to scatter its 6 million population across the Jutland Peninsula and 409 nearby islands. Prosperous, well-fed – 6th place among other countries in terms of standard of living. But the country has never had an automobile industry.


There was very little of anything on a global scale. Thank you, Hans, our unforgettable Andersen, who told his tales there with deep Christian morals and philosophy. Ole Kirk Christiansen also invented Lego construction sets in 1932. The list of outstanding things would have ended there. But on the island of Zealand a boy was born…

Zenvo Automotive Company

The future car designer was named Troels Wollertsen. Since childhood, the boy had some kind of mechanism in his hands, he was always making something. He went to work at a service station. Later, he tuned racing cars for local teams.


Having gained experience, Troels realized that he could create his own design. He set the bar high – sports hypercars with unique technical characteristics. His limited-edition cars would be ashamed to dart along the streets next to regular Mercedes, Renaults, and Ferraris.

Sports cars, powerful and daring on the level of the Bugatti Veyron, the dreamer dreamed, will be torn off by collectors of luxury brands: well, sheikhs, presidents, bohemians. The idea was believed by stylist Christian Brandt, who, with a diploma from the Royal College of Art, worked on the bodies of Alfa Romeo and Mercedes Benz. The talented designer Jesper Hermann also took on the task of helping with the exterior.


In 2004, friends set up a machine-building enterprise using credit and sponsorship money. The company's ideologist cleverly incorporated the name of the island where he was born and his own name into the abbreviation "Zenvo".

Implementation of the plan

Building a supercar is not a pleasure trip. Automotive luminaries start with primitives and spend decades until they mature into great models.


Our hot Danish guys, who no one had heard of, took 4 years from the start to the premiere of the concept. The official presentation took place in the combat conditions of the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2009. Zenvo immediately won the title of "Supercar of the Year". After this event, the model was launched into production.

Exterior

The partners were aiming for a completely unusual appearance of a 2-door coupe. "A predator before the jump" - that's how the developers announced their creation. It's impressive, although we don't remember anyone before them taking the grace of a hippopotamus as a model.

But it is hard to dispute the beauty of the car, the plasticity of a wild cat in its appearance. As, incidentally, one cannot deny its decisive, aggressive nature.


The dimensions of the "Dane" with a wheelbase of 3055 mm are as follows:

✅ Length - 4665 mm
✅ Width - 2041 mm
✅ Height - 1198 mm

The curb weight, despite the impressive dimensions, is small – 1376 kg. This is due to the body panels, wheel disks and interior parts made of carbon fiber. About the rollers: Michelin Pilot Sport CUP 2 tires. Dimensions front and rear: 275/35 ZR19 and 345/30 ZR20, respectively.

A squat, crouched car. But the clearance is adjustable from 110 mm (for the track) to 160 mm (for the highway). The merit in the metamorphosis of ground clearance belongs to the gas-hydraulic shock absorbers KW.

Technology features

The Zenvo ST1 was completely assembled and hand-fitted using a five-axis CNC milling machine. The parts were mostly made in-house.


But high-tech units were purchased from other companies – leaders in highly specialized industries. For example, the same housings were brought from Germany. Numerous sensors, gas tanks, airbags, anti-skid systems came from America.

The company also received ABS brakes through export. This is a magnificent and expensive Brembo with 6-piston calipers. Carbon-ceramic discs: front – 395 mm, rear – 380 mm.

Salon

The interior of the coupe incorporated the best technologies that existed in the industry. The leather interior offered riders bucket-shaped sports seats with electrical adjustments, a satellite navigation system, a climate control system, and a telescopic adjustable steering wheel.


The driver and passenger areas are highlighted in contrasting colors. The luxury coupes for daily use are customized individually for each customer. Therefore, the customer has an unlimited combination of finishing materials: leather, carbon fiber, Alcantara. The car has a dashboard display and an entertainment screen with an Alpine audio system and Bluetooth.

Мотор

The rear-wheel drive chassis was equipped by engineers with independent suspension with double V-shaped levers at the front and rear. The developers were proud of the superchargers.

For the first time in the history of hypercars, the Danes used double supercharging, which was reflected in the model index:

✅ S (Supercharger) – mechanical supercharger
✅ T (Turbo) – turbocharged compressor

This combination made it possible to squeeze high performance indicators out of the engine: acceleration to “hundreds” in 3 seconds, speed of 375 km/h.


Features of the mid-mounted V8 power plant:

✅ Volume – 7011 cm3
✅ Power - 1104 liters. With. at 6,9 thousand rpm
✅ Peak moment of force - 1430 N * m at 4,5 thousand rpm

The engine was paired with a 6-speed Ricardo manual transmission. So, everything seemed to be beyond praise? Alas…

Fire

An unknown manufacturer from a country with no car industry at all made a big splash at the prestigious competition. Could the funny, charming and sarcastic Jeremy Clarkson pass by?

A British TV presenter invited the Zenvo ST1 hypercar to the Top Gear show. Great advertising for the new product. However, during the filming of the program, two breakdowns occurred one after another.


Clarkson said that the car's only trump card was its exclusivity. Trying to correct the omissions, the Danish engineers achieved the worst result: the Zenvo ST1 caught fire right under the cameras.

The pilot ejected with a parachute. The cause was later found to be in the fuel system. The other car did complete a full lap of the wet Top Gear test track, but it was far behind the BMW M5.

Further development of the company

It is not easy to rise after such a failure. To the credit of the Danes, they took the blow with dignity. The few employees of Zenvo Automotive did not give up. They continued to work hard, producing 15 copies of the ST1 model.

At the Geneva Motor Show 2016, the Zenvo TS1 GT model was presented to the public. The "gran tourer" received the same monocoque and body. A new feature of the exterior was a glass cover in the rear part, through which the engine was visible.


The designers left the double supercharging, which increases the car's performance. But the 32-valve V8 engine, based on the Chevrolet GM architecture, changed its characteristics. Now the user was offered a 5,8-liter unit with 1119 "horses" and 1139 Nm of torque.

The Danes upgraded the unit themselves. The transmission already had a 7-speed automatic transmission with dual clutch and helical gears. Gear shifting took 35 milliseconds – a record for serial passenger cars.

In the following modifications with the indexes TSR (track version) and TSR-S (road-track version), the manufacturer followed the path of increasing power, reducing weight, improving safety and reducing noise.

Oil on Russian hearts

In short, the descendants of the storyteller Andersen are great. But what's interesting is that Troels Wollertsen prefers completely different cars. Maybe the prices are too high for his own? The price list starts at 800 thousand euros.


The family garage has a Porsche Cayenne, and the manufacturer of crazy hypercars drives a Russian Niva. Our SUV will probably be more reliable. The Dane seems to understand that all these thousands of horsepower are pure show-offs, ostentation (apologies for the vulgar expressions). But for life we ​​need simple, understandable, repairable cars.

They say that Troels once pulled out a Cayenne stuck in the forest with his wife at the wheel. They don’t say what brought the flighty Dane there. It doesn’t matter. The main thing is that you involuntarily begin to respect the domestic auto industry…