Earlier this week, the world was introduced to what promises to be, on paper at least, the most powerful, expensive, and impressive hypercar ever. It’s so special that it’s not even a hypercar anymore, but an “ultracar” with a name to match: Chaos.
Chaos is the work of SP Automotive, founded and fronted by Spyros Panopoulos, a Greek drag racing tuner with an impressive resume and decades of experience in the industry. It is also the most spectacular and high-performance vehicle ever introduced, whether in the metal or as a concept. It schooled the likes of the Chiron, the SSC Tuatara, the Hennessey Venom F5, and the Rimac Nevera on how you do a hypercar car right.
In its base trim configuration, Chaos delivers 2,049 hp and 1,025 lb-ft (1,390 Nm) of torque. The higher-specced version develops no less than 3,065 hp and 1,463 lb-ft (1,983.5 Nm) of torque, taking it from 0 to 60 mph (100kph) in 1.55 seconds. Chaos is incredibly light, featuring plenty of carbon fiber within and without, and mostly 3D-printed parts, optimized according to a proprietary method called the anadiaplasi process, which uses generative design to find designs that are the lightest and most durable.
All this is on paper only, for the time being. SP Automotive did not reveal a timeline for deliveries on the Chaos, but it did say with the official announcement that one item had already been sold even before the presentation. That alone is impressive, considering pricing is between $6.4 and $14 million, and we’re talking about a car from a company that came out of nowhere, with no production facility and no official list of partners.
Photo: Via SP Automotive
In short, you would be justified if you thought something along the lines of “hm, this sounds almost too good to be true!” Shortly after the Chaos introduction, SP Automotive introduced two more vehicles, a luxury supercar powered by hydrogen called the Zion and an all-electric city car called Cubicle, with plans to make and sell them both at some unspecified point in time.
We’re all game for reaching for the stars, hoping for the best, and any other similar cliché, but the move felt like an overdose on optimism. It didn’t take long for people to call “vaporware.” If the world has learned anything in recent years, it’s that startups can and will lie to get investors and then fade into obscurity without delivering on their promises. We’ve reached out to SP Automotive for more details on Chaos, but in the meantime, the startup seems bent on showing that the ultracar is anything but vaporware.
Some hours ago, Panopoulos posted a teaser video of the Chaos on Instagram. You can see it in full below, but don’t get your hopes too high just yet: it shows a shrouded silhouette, with the implication that this is either a scale model or a working prototype. After a long look at the covered rear, with the brake lights on, Panapoulos moves to the front end and slowly lifts the cover to show the logo on the hood.
Photo: Instagram / Spyros Panopoulos
It’s not much, but it does play into what he’s been saying on social media, namely that they already have an actual Chaos in construction at an undisclosed facility. He’s also been saying that they chose to introduce the ultracar with renders because photos of the incomplete project had leaked to the press. It also aims to prove, beyond a doubt, that the Chaos is real: it could only be vaporware if it existed in renders only.
“In a short time the official presentation as we promised!,” Panapoulos writes. In other words, it won’t be long until we see a bit more than CGIs, so hold your hatin’ and your no-saying until then.
We won’t get into how convincing the teaser video is or isn’t because that’s up for every one of you to decide on your own. But we will say this: that silhouette under the cover seems the same one Panapoulous were teasing in photos more than 20 months ago. Everything is the same, down to the storage facility and the markings on the floor, as photos in the gallery show. So, in the end, this video really doesn’t “prove” anything. If anything, the closer you look at it, the more confusion it creates.
It will be another while until “vaporware” buzz goes away, and it’s entirely dependent on SP Automotive’s next move.
Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends. Full profile
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