The 2025 Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard once again showcased a wide range of new car debuts, but few made as strong an impression as the Zenvo Aurora. The progress of the small-scale Danish manufacturer has been closely observed over the years, with each new variant of its 1,000PS 5.8-litre V8 hypercar joining the growing lineup of similarly powerful machines tackling the Goodwood Hill. However, in 2025, Zenvo truly stood out and captured attention.
The Aurora, seen in motion for the first time during the 2025 Festival of Speed, represents a complete reinvention of Zenvo — an effort to move the brand beyond the uninspiring trend of prioritizing power over passion.
It was back in 2021 that newly appointed Chairman and CCO Jens Sverdrup, formerly of Koenigsegg, laid out a brand-new vision for the company that would set it apart from the ever more diluted hypercar space.
During the Festival of Speed, an interview was conducted to learn more about Zenvo’s new era and how the Aurora is set to shape the future — not only for the brand itself but potentially for hypercars as a whole.
“Internally we call it Zenvo 2.0, almost to the point where we could have rebranded completely. With the Aurora everything’s new from scratch. I think it’s the world’s most from scratch hypercar ever, there’s nothing bought off the shelf. Everything’s designed either for us or by us.”
And built by a team of roughly 150 enthusiasts who are in the business for love rather than money. It’s true in this case that the car reflects the passion of the manufacturers.
“It’s still a very small team and a lot of long hours, but everyone’s buzzing. We were talking a couple of weeks back, me and our CTO Jon [Gunner], and I was like ‘have you asked anyone to work overtime?’ He said ‘no, everyone’s just doing the work.’ We haven’t had to ask anyone.”
“It’s of course highly appreciated to see, touch, hear and get a live update of where we are on development. Had we have gone to a static motor show we’d never have got that opportunity, so the Festival of Speed is a perfect event for it.”
“Internally it was a huge deal. It’s emotional, there were tears, there was a lot of anxiety, because I feel like I took a risk with the company, and at the same time I’ve decided that we as a company are transparent, no smoke and mirrors, what you see is what get. If the car failed, we wouldn’t come up with a lie, we would tell people exactly why.
“That’s something I decided when I came onboard. This is us, Scandinavian, full transparency because that’s our culture. It’s a calculated risk, you’re still super anxious, you want to make that one run at least.
“We had one problem on the second run, and that was something as mundane as an off-the-shelf steering wheel and we couldn’t get out of second gear, but apart from that no overheating, no nothing. It’s been good.”
It’s a remarkable accomplishment considering the car had undergone only 90 minutes of testing ahead of its debut outing on the Goodwood Hill, but it’s part of the Zenvo philosophy that customers should be allowed to experience the development as it happens.
As part of the event, the Aurora was heard for the first time during its official launch at the Festival on Thursday morning, marked by the first public start-up of its fascinating modular V12 engine. The Mahle powertrain, developed specifically for the Aurora, operates under the premise of being the most powerful street-legal V12 engine in the world.
The Aurora features a plug-in hybrid, quad-turbocharged 6.6-litre engine paired with three electric motors, delivering a maximum output of 1,850PS (1,360kW). The powertrain is designed to be road-legal in both Europe and the United States. Its standout characteristic is modularity, with Zenvo already developing plans for a future V10 variant. The prospect of another naturally aspirated, high-revving V12 entering production has generated significant anticipation among enthusiasts, including Zenvo’s leadership.
Although the Aurora has not yet been heard operating at its full 10,000rpm potential — something expected later in the year — even its initial startup note has drawn considerable attention and curiosity.
“It doesn’t sound like any other. Well, up high it does, it sounds like a banshee, but you haven’t heard that yet. It’s important for me to have a mechanically quiet engine, not a lot of mechanical valvetrain noise. The exhaust is literally straight out of the box.
“It has four small turbos and they don’t really kick in until late, so there’s a lot of inlets to create this big, massive, boomy sound. Your body vibrates standing next to it, it’s loud but not shrill. It becomes shrill over 7,000rpm, it starts to scream like the Cosworth V12s.”
The sound was a surprise to the engineers, too, who also didn’t quite know what to expect from this extraordinary design.
“It’s a very good entry point to start tweaking, because we will tweak the exhaust sound. It could be a lot louder if we wanted to.”
There’s a bit of work still to go until the Aurora can be fully unleashed. Though, while it’s complex enough, Zenvo is going into painstaking detail on every single element.
“We’re also developing our own gearbox. It’s a race gearbox, that’s why we’re pushing the car because it has an on-and-off clutch. It’s a hand clutch like a race clutch, you can’t feather it, you just have to do 3,000rpm and dump it.
“By December 2025 we’ll be running all systems go, something that’s relatively close to production spec. That’s when we’ll see the full potential of the car.”
As it stands, the plan is for us to see the Aurora again at the Festival of Speed in 2026. The car made its dynamic debut in limited form in 2025, but Sverdrup has made a promise that it’ll be back in capacity next year.
“I made the Duke a promise last year. He was looking at the show car, and I said next year we’ll be driving. Now I’ve made another promise, that we’ll have the two cars [Aurora Tur and Aurora Agil] going up the Hill here next year at full chat, screaming their lungs out.”
Photography by Joe Harding, Raife Smith, Steven Stringer and Jack Beasley.
Report by Simon Ostler
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