Gift Guide - Gloffke

the RiDe
Spanish Fly
Amazing Tramontana R brings race-car
design to the luxury automobile.
By Tom Lapointe
“The Tramontana R has massive horsepower
to complement styling that mimics single-seat
race cars and fighter jets, and is an ideal choice
for well-heeled shoppers who want a vehicle
that is unlike any other on the road.”
When you’re shopping for a handbuilt
European supercar, odds are that you don’t make
plans to start browsing in the backwoods of Spain, where
Surrealist painter Salvadore dalí spent his youth. Spain has
been home to a dozen car manufacturers through the years,
and a small company in the catalonia region, about 100 miles
up the Mediterranean coast from Barcelona, is building an
outrageous car that will assert a major challenge to the famous
italian brands. The Tramontana R has massive horsepower
to complement styling that mimics single-seat race cars and
fighter jets, and is an ideal choice for well-heeled shoppers
who want a vehicle that is unlike any other on the road.
Several boutique car builders have attempted to bring
a Formula 1 style vehicle to market, but the Tramontana
appears to have all the right ingredients to put the pedal
to the metal: distinctive looks, true race-car engineering,
carbon-fiber construction and a drive train powered by an
impressively dynamic engine. its extraordinary visual beauty
is the product of a team of veterans from both aerospace and
engineering disciplines, and skilled fabricators led by Josep
Rubau, a visionary professor of the masters program of vehicle
design at the Elisava/universitat pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.
But the Tramontana R is no academic exercise; it is a finelytuned
rocket on four wheels.
The heart of the vehicle is its incredible rear mid-mounted,
twin-turbocharged V12 engine sourced from Mercedes-Benz.
The dash has a selection switch that allows the driver to set
the 5.5-litre power plant to either 550 horsepower for
casual driving; or a whopping 720 horsepower at 5,250
RpM (and 811 pound-feet of torque at only 4,000 RpM),
for ultimate performance. This asphalt-shredding power is
channeled to the rear wheels through a 6-speed sequential
manual gearbox (SMG) that is engaged with a traditional
clutch. Working this effective combination gives this
special car a top speed of more than 200 mph. Factory specs
have the vehicle making a 0-62 mph run in 3.6 seconds,
a conservative estimate, given its impressive power-toweight
ratio.
26 AFFLUENT PAGE LUXURY INDEX | DECEMBER 2010 DECEMBER 2010 | AFFLUENT PAGE LUXURY INDEX 27