Zenvo is an ultra-low production Danish car company that has made no more than 30 cars despite being founded by Troels Vollertsen over a decade ago. The manufacturer has had a grand total of three models made, all based around the same design that was penned in 2009 for its first car, the ST1.
The ST1 was powered by a supercharged and turbocharged V8 with over 1,000 horsepower going exclusively to the rear wheels. It was handbuilt in Denmark and was produced for over 8 years.
Despite it being produced for so long, there were only 15 ever made, which equates to less than 2 made per year. Zenvo priced the car at $1.125 million for the U.S market, but if you wanted to buy the car in its home country, it would cost over three and a half times as much because of the immense registration cost.
However, that isn’t what this car is remembered for. On a British motoring show called Top Gear, the car was being tested on the track and its rear brakes malfunctioned and the clutch failed. After it returned after being repaired, a cooling fan failed and the car caught on fire. These disasters made the company seem unreliable, a reputation I’m not sure it has truly recovered from.
The next road-going car they made was the TS1, a successor to the ST1. It was still rear wheel drive, and still made the same amount of power, but instead of a dual-charged engine, they replaced it with an in-house twin supercharged V8. It also gained a limited slip differential and slight changes to the bodywork, but on the exterior, it is virtually identical to its predecessor.
The final car on this list is a bit complicated. The ST1 and the TS1 were the first cars ever made by Zenvo, but they were both street legal and Zenvo wanted to improve its reputation on the racetrack, so they made a track-only version of the TS1, called the TSR, which feature a massive fixed rear wing and more power, 1,177 horsepower to be precise.
The final car on this list is the TSR-S, which was the street-legal version of the TSR. It replaced the fixed wing with an innovative active wing that pivoted side to side in an attempt to improve downforce while cornering. It was actually blackflagged at the Nurburgring while testing because the wing was so strange that officials thought the car was broken.
Its interior sacrificed all creature comforts in pursuit of lightness, which meant getting rid of the air conditioning, airbags, and radio. The car is still being built by hand to this day in Denmark, but it is limited to a max production volume of 5 cars.
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