—CONTENTS

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02BRAND & HERITAGE

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08ARROW – ENGINEERING PRINCIPLES

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04A NEW CHAPTER

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16MOVING WHEN STANDING STILL

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06APOLLO N

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—BRAND & HERITAGE

SINCE THE INVENTION OF THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE IN 1807, MAN HAS RESTLESSLY SOUGHT TO GO FASTER.

The immutable laws of physics that govern speed are simple. Our tool of choice to challenge these boundaries is the application of engineering efficiency. In 2004, Roland Gumpert of Audi AG established a car company with the singular intent of creating the world’s fastest car. In 2005, he delivered the Gumpert Apollo.

Apollo’s efficiency is born of its German engineering origins, which blends speed and efficiency, form and function, and ultimately is more than science. It is the paradoxical combination of pure German engineering and fine art. And we share these results with you, taking form as the purest expression of engineering in our cars. The Apollo hypercar was born on the Nurburgring and will always be honed on its curves, designed to master its straights. It is where we belong with a heart that beats with a German purity of purpose.

Our purity of purpose means the driver is at the heart of car, unimpeded by artifice. The records Apollo broke are undeniable, the new milestones we will achieve are unfathomable.

A decade after the Apollo shook the world by stealth and surprise, a new chapter has begun in the car maker’s history: a new technical centre in Denkendorf in Upper Bavaria, an impressive international network of showrooms and most importantly, an extraordinary new hypercar. We will not rest until we have pushed the boundary of engineering and performance to its breaking point. We are, and will always be, a force in the restive advance of performance, and for us as engineers, this is reason enough.

—5

—A NEW CHAPTER

AFTER A PERIOD OF RE-ORGANISATION, THE ARROW IS HERE TO RE-ESTABLISH APOLLO’S PRE-EMINENCE AS THE MAKER OF THE FASTEST CARS IN THE WORLD, DELIVERED THROUGH THE RIGOUR AND PRECISION OF LOW-VOLUME, HIGH-CRAFT GERMAN ENGINEERING.

While the Arrow marks a new chapter for Apollo, the philosophy that drives us is unchanged. A car that overcomes its mass through aerodynamics will accelerate, corner, and even slow down, faster. Our reverence for this law of dynamics informs everything we do.

So the Arrow, as a mid-engined car, uses the race track as its reference. In its most extreme expression, our new car indeed requires the skill of a race driver to unearth its ultimate performance and for that we make no apology. We have never aimed to please the timid.

With a uniformity of purpose and an unchanged engineering philosophy, our starting point for the Arrow has been to take the extraordinary basis for the Gumpert Apollo and completely re-invent it, both visually and at the core of engineering.

With a completely new drivetrain that meets Euro6 regulations and a fundamental re-design of the cockpit and aerodynamically-led re-profiling, the Gumpert Apollo’s provenance is hinted at in the Arrow. The genetic code remains, but has been re-expressed to make a claim for supremacy in today’s world order of hypercars.

Apollo’s world is by virtue, small and select. We build few cars and can only share our work with but a handful of people, but we welcome the prospect of you sharing in the next chapter of our history.

—APOLLO N

Despite a history of excellence in automotive engineering, Germany lacked a genuine hypercar manufacturer capable of challenging the Italian hegemony of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Pagani. Apollo – and its antecedent, Gumpert – seeks to apply the precision of German engineering philosophy to the ultimate expression of automotive performance.

The company’s first car was conceived in the rarified research environments of the Technical University of Munich and the Ingolstadt University of Applied Sciences before taking form in the company’s factory in Altenburg. The result took the world by storm.

Based on a mid-engined configuration underpinned by a tubular chromoly frame and integrated carbon monocoque, the Gumpert Apollo S broke cover in 2005 and soon after made good on its intent by securing an award from Sport Auto for the fastest lap ever recorded by a street legal road car on the 21km Nordschleife in a time of 7m 11.57s.

The Apollo underwent a series of iterations and variants, progressively evolving the performance envelope while staying true to its engineering tenets of aerodynamically-informed surface profiling, road-optimised weight distribution and a track & wheelbase ratio designed to best use the prodigious power from the V8 bi-turbo engine. Roland Gumpert leads a team of engineers integral in the past, present and future development of Apollo. One of their superlative achievements – upgrading the Apollo Enraged to the new Apollo N.

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—ARROWENGINEERING PR INC IPLES

Our first concern is for the safety of our drivers and passengers. As the performance of our cars is increased, we ensure that the safety threshold matches every kilometre gained in speed. For this reason, we believe the only chassis construction method that delivers the safety demanded of hypercars is by combining the dual technologies of a chromoly frame with an integral carbon monocoque.

Our technical layout is informed by race car dynamics, and the Arrow remains true to Apollo tradition of mid-engined platforms that offer the very best dynamic behaviour under yaw, pitch and mass transfer under steer.

With these two tenets established, the final principle is that the car’s dynamic performance under acceleration, braking and cornering can be optimised if the mass is overcome by inherent aerodynamics. So we aimed to design a light car, with a target dry weight of 1200kg ensuring that downforce performance at a set velocity allows this mass to be neutralised, thereby enabling all dynamic performance to be unfettered, fluid and highly responsive.

Visually, the Arrow is a completely re-considered car, reflecting ten years of advancement in computational fluid dynamics. This results in a radically different aerodynamic treatment – while being aesthetically striking – we have exponentially improved drag/downforce ratios and enhanced cooling performance.

THE ARROW IS FIRMLY ROOTED, LIKE ITS APOLLO ANTECEDENTS, IN SOME ENGINEERING FUNDAMENTALS THAT HAVE COME TO DEFINE THE WAY WE BELIEVE A HYPERCAR SHOULD BE CONCEIVED.

—ARROW

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The engine is completely new. The 4.0 litre V8 bi-turbo meets the demanding Euro6 emissions standards and adopts latest fluid-based intercooler management. The new generation engine is matched to a completely re-designed lightweight 7-speed gearbox.

Revisions to the chassis fore and fuel cell aft have provided for an increase in cabin space, with the adjustable range for the driver’s seating now sufficient to accommodate drivers up to 2m tall. The sill depth has been dropped to make entry and exit from the cabin easier, all of which conspires to make the cockpit comfortable and straightforward, in turn adding to the appeal of a high performance car that can be used every day.

Usability is key to the Arrow being at once exotic and simultaneously a pleasure to use, with refinements ranging from powered windows to ESP, ABS, sat nav and air conditioning standard in almost all specifications, with the concession to absolute performance not conditional upon comfort or utility.

The ultimate benchmark our engineers set themselves in designing the Arrow was to respond to the full range of dynamic challenges that are encountered on the open road from transfer of weight through complex cambers and multiple event braking performance to high speed corner stability. Such a diversity of dynamic tests can only be found in one location – on the 21km of the Nordschleife.

—ARROW

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—MOVING WHEN STANDING ST ILLTHE ARROW BY DESIGN

The Arrow’s softer styling cues are less aggressive, but remain wholly conditioned by the same aerodynamic principles that drove the original design – send as much air over the surface geometries as possible, none underneath and just the required volume to satisfy cooling needs through the car.

However, as rigorously applied as these aerodynamic conditions are, the Arrow is not merely the result of optimised aero-influenced design. The car’s designers explain, “Often an over-dependence on aero-led styling results in a car that has been created through computational fluid dynamics – the computing tools we use to optimise downforce/drag ratios – and this can result in designs that have as much sensitivity as a concerto written by a computer.”

LAUDED FOR ITS BRUTALITY OF STYLING IN ITS ORIGINAL FORM, THE UK’S AUTOCAR MAGAZINE DESCRIBED THE FIRST GENERATION OF THE APOLLO IN 2005 AS “A CONTENDER IN THE PANTHEON OF TERRIFYING SIGHTS.”

So human intervention becomes essential, and our philosophy when confronted with a design brief that has a high aerodynamic threshold to pass is to turn to mother-nature. The cues that can be borrowed from animal or plant life are almost always design-efficient, and when looking at optimised conditions to move through fluids, sharks happen to deliver both an aesthetic and a mechanical efficiency to marvel at, and there are plenty of influences from the ocean’s primary predator in the Arrow.

Naturally, it is important to create a sense of lineage from the 2005 design by retaining certain key attributes from the original car. The sill depth, the gull-wing doors and the central air-intake ram were the key signature items of the original car, so these have been carefully preserved and blended with the new design treatment, which wraps, fore and aft, around a re-design of the cockpit for taller drivers.

The new Apollo design treatment, inspired by the carnivorous ruthlessness of the ocean, is important not just for the Arrow, but also to set a tonal approach for Apollo as it looks forward. Consumers today all have a highly sensitised response to design and instinctively begin to relate cues that originate from a single philosophy. For our designers, the design that heralded the re-birth of Apollo is crucial as it will have defining influence over the style of the cars that follow. Most importantly, the fluidity of the design, like a shark, gives the Arrow the appearance of motion even when it stands still.

THE FLUIDITY OF THE DESIGN, LIKE A SHARK, GIVES THE ARROW THE APPEARANCE OF MOTION EVEN WHEN IT STANDS STILL

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