Icona Vulcano Titanium

Last year we clapped eyes on the Icona Vulcano, straight from the “um, who are they?” school of supercars. It was all renders and awkwardly angled phone pictures.

But now it is real, and it’s coming to England, more specifically the Salon Prive Concours event, being held at Blenheim Palace in September.

  

Made of titanium, it’s said to be inspired by the mighty Blackbird SR-71 plane. We’d argue it’s nowhere near as superb to look at, but it is very arresting nonetheless. And Icona’s design director Samuel Chuffart is only too happy to divulge the troubles he had deciding how the Vulcano should look.

“The most challenging design issue which we faced was how to create a balance between power and beauty,” he says. “If you make too much of the powerful features which are necessary to a super sports car, such as its cooling cutouts and blades which manage the air flow, they become graphically too dominant, and this makes the car less beautiful.”

Chuffart reckons, though, that the Vulcano gets the balance spot on. Icona says that it took 10,000 hours to craft the titanium into the shapes required.

Plenty of love has gone into the interior, too. With leather, carbon and Alcantara, it ticks off all the important supercar cabin materials. The steering wheel appears to have been lifted from a Ferrari 458, sharing the same design – indicator buttons and all – albeit with a different manettino switch with fewer functions.

There’s a very techy TFT instrument display, a Tesla-like portrait screen (some grabs from which are above) and some tactile looking toggle switches. The seats are from Sabelt, a company with strong motorsport links.

Power is, of course, important in a car like this. It comes from a tried-and-tested source for obscure supercar makers, being a supercharged V8 from General Motors, namely the 6.2-litre from the Corvette ZR1.

It produces 661bhp and 605lb ft, good for 0-62mph in 2.8secs and 0-124mph in 8.6secs. Top speed? It “exceeds 355km/h” we’re told, which means 220mph-plus. The brakes are carbon ceramics, so it should be easy to get rid of all that speed, too. Phew.

Icona is also claiming Nürburgring Nordschleife “capability” of below 7:20, which would make it quicker than the ZR1, and potentially the Nissan GT-R, too. We look forward to seeing whether its capability will ever be proven.

Smitten by the Vulcano without such proof? It’s a one-off, but you can buy it. If you have 2.5million euros to hand, anyhow, which is about £2.1million.

More than a Bugatti Chiron, more than a Lamborghini Centenario and more than a McLaren P1 GTR. But unlike those, you can guarantee you’ll never park alongside another Vulcano.

 

DESIGN

Exquisitely sharp silhouettes compliment sensual surface transitions. Sweet lines and full surfacing stands in stark contrast to sharp blades, and cooling cutouts.

The design approach to Vulcano Titanium is to express its amazing capabilities as a powerful car, while maintaining harmonious and generous shapes: bringing together Beauty and the Beast.

PERFORMANCE

Vulcano Titanium’s midfront-mounted supercharged V8 engine is calibrated for both homologated road and race use, achieving an optimum balance of usability and efficiency.

Able to achieve a 0-100 km/hr acceleration time of 2.8 seconds, Vulcano Titanium’s character is one that is will give you the thrill of racing yet is also suited for daily use.

BUILD

Titanium is lightweight and strong, yet inflexible and difficult to work with. So why sculpt a supercar from Titanium?

The answer lies in the finished result; a beautifully sculpted masterpiece of bare titanium, showing off the tens of thousands of hours spent by our master craftsmen to bring Vulcano Titanium to life.