When the motoring world's elite plan to spend they head straight to the Top Marques Show in Monaco. NICK HALLwent along for the ride
THE GAP between rich and poor is growing by the day, so there are two clear markets to go for in the automotive world. The used-car market and mainstream brands have the lower end well covered, but the super rich are not so easily pleased. Instead, the motoring world’s elite heads to the gambling capital of Europe every year for the celebration of four-wheeled opulence that is Top Marques Monaco.
Now in its ninth year, Top Marques has evolved into a major date on the motor show calendar: a boat and watch show has joined the fray and it has spawned a second event in Macau. What marks it apart from the standard shows is the complete absence of humdrum “econo-boxes” – everything glitters and probably is gold right here. Then there is the test drive area outside.
Here potential buyers can take passenger rides in the world’s best supercars and actually try them out against the likely competitors around the Monaco Grand Prix circuit. Okay, so the roads aren’t closed, there’s heavy traffic and the frustrated drivers are limited to short bursts, but those few short bursts of power have sealed massive deals on their own.
A lightweight Sperrer KTM X-Bow hounds the Koenigsegg CCX through the famous tunnel at a massively illegal speed and the noise alone threatens the structural integrity of the walls. The drivers are deep in triple figures on the exit with the traffic backed up the other side. It looks a bit lairy sometimes and the police visit several exhibitors to discuss their driving and even offer to impound Hamann Motorsport’s SLS Hawk, but it’s awesome to watch.
This is not a show for the casual punter, those not invited thanks to their credit rating have to pay €50 to get through the door. Top Marques Monaco wants the buyers there, footfall is irrelevant, and it even clashes with the ATP Tennis Masters down the road to ensure the right kind of people are in town.
Inside, the Pagani Huayra vies for attention with the Koenigsegg Agera R and the Bugatti Veyron Pur Sang that now comes with a €2 million price tag. But while these are not new cars, there were some real show stoppers on offer close by.
Rimac brought its Concept_One electric car to the show and it is perhaps the most exciting machine of the year – if it lives up to the hype. With 1088bhp courtesy of four independent motors it has just as much power as a Bugatti Veyron with pure electric propulsion.
It’s a €950,000 car, but then it will hit 305km/h and 100km/h in less than three seconds if the official figures are right. There’s an element of doubt, because surely a car like this should come from Bugatti, or Porsche, rather than a start-up from Croatia. But if this car does what its makers claim it is going to be epic.
Elsewhere the Savage Rivale Roadyacht GTR caused a major stir. We were told to ignore the numberplates; on show was the track-only version of the four-door supercar that is the GTS. Two doors seems to suit the shape better and the car looks immense, ignoring the 800bhp, seven-litre supercharged engine and supposed 1,030kg kerbweight. The company has promised a drive in the near future and the car at Top Marques was a full runner and even though it isn’t strictly “street legal” it was seen and most definitely heard lapping the Grand Prix track at around 10pm on Sunday night.
Costing just €150,000 plus taxes and promising 350km/h speeds, the Rivale GTR might just be the pound-for-pound star of the show. Another lightweight rocket was in attendance, too, the Roding Roadster 23.
This German machine weighs just 950kg thanks to extensive use of carbon fibre and plastic body panels, so the 320bhp BMW twin turbo 3 litre under the skin is ample. With perfect fit and finish and a futuristic dash, as well as naked carbon-fibre on show everywhere, Roding should have no trouble shifting the 23 examples it intends to build and made at least one sale at the show.
Tipping the scales in totally the opposite direction was the Dartz Prombron from the upcoming Sacha Baren Cohen film, The Dictator. Weighing in at a colossal 4.5 tonnes, this SUV started life as a humble Chevy Blazer before being rebodied by Dartz and covered in layers of metal and ceramic that effectively bombproofs the car.
Inch-thick bulletproof glass is just another security measure, but to appeal to the world’s most well-heeled and paranoid, Dartz proceeds to trim the interior with the most lavish materials known to man. The car at the show didn’t have the full treatment, but others have had the cockpit trimmed with diamonds and whale foreskin leather. Seriously.
Ironically, Dartz stopped using whale foreskin after Pamela Anderson spoke out against the practice. She must have forgotten, because she visited the show as a guest of tuning firm Gemballa but didn’t pay a visit to the Dartz stand that stood just 30 metres away.
GTA has been doing the rounds of the motor shows for years now, but brought a fully-running prototype to Top Marques and showed the car in action for the first time. This 345km/h, 800bhp rocket has evolved into one of the most beautiful supercars on the market today and we’ve asked to drive it so often that it’s getting embarrassing. Hopefully that quest will soon come to an end.
The concentrated wealth of Monaco also brings the tuners like moths to a flame. German tuner Hamann Motorsport was well represented with its MemoR – a violent interpretation of the McLaren MP4-12C. Ron Dennis’s engineering masterpiece has been accused of lacking pizzazz, but thanks to the Germans that simply isn’t true anymore and this widebody kit and violent wing takes the car dangerously close to over the top. Then there’s the firm’s SLS Roadster with its matte red film and naked carbon-fibre bonnet – which pretty much smashes through that fine line.
“It’s like tasting wines together, there was nowhere you could really do that with cars and we saw a real opportunity to bring the world’s best manufacturers together in an exciting location where the real buyers congregate,” explains show organiser Steven Saltzman.
The stroke of genius was to combine the mailing list of a local private bank and the luxury car showrooms to concentrate all of Monaco’s combined wealth on this weekend. That allowed them to add Top Marques Watches and Boats, as well as a host of other luxury goods vendors, to create a show with a thousand different ways of parting the wealthy from a slice of their fortune.
The Sperrer KTM X-Bow Gendarmerie was one of the most violent cars at the show. With just 750kg of kerbweight hindering its 400bhp engine, the X-Bow has a Bugatti veyron-esque power-to-weight ratio, racing car handling and even with the multi-million euro machines at the show this was easily the fastest car on the tight and twisting GP circuit. The police livery is a borderline irrelevance and just a touch daft, but as a pure piece of engineering this carbon fibre road rocket was amongst the show’s best.
As was the Tushek T500 Renovatio, from another unlikely supercar nation – Slovenia. Loosely based on the K1 Attack Roadster kit car, it comes with a 450bhp Audi engine, breaks 340km/h with ease and hits 100km/h in less than 3.7s.
It seems overpriced at €270,000, but then many visitors to Top Marques simply don’t look at price tags and it’s one of those cars that could capture a rich man’s imagination long enough to get the deal signed off.
There was an Irish presence in the boutique section, with fisherman turned yacht skipper turned property developer turned sculptor Eoin Turner. An artist from a young age, Turner finally decided to fulfil his ambition and create sculptures and glassware influenced by the ocean. Now he is commissioned to provide sculptures of yachts, caviar bowls with extravagant jewels and more to sit inside the boats and houses of the super rich.
