Listen to the Kiwi-built V12 engine at the heart of the Nilu hypercar | Ryan Bridge TODAY

[00:00:00]That's the V12 engine firing up for the first time in Palmerston North. Yes, our Palmerston North, where it was designed and built by Kiwi company Hartley Engines.

[00:00:12]Oh, listen to that.

[00:00:15]If you're into it, this is good.

[00:00:19]This doesn't stop. Damien O'Carroll driven Senna GTR doesn't fly away.

[00:00:24]>> [laughter] >> Damien, good morning.

[00:00:26]>> Good morning.

[00:00:26]>> That was intense.

[00:00:27]>> Morning, yes. And that wasn't even revving out particularly high either.

[00:00:30]That's got a lot more to give. Um yeah, the interesting [clears throat] thing about it is, I mean million dollar lim- super limited hypercars are everywhere these days. Um this >> [laughter] >> more or less.

[00:00:41]>> Yeah, I'm like, where? Not at my house.

[00:00:44]>> No, not on the roads, but just, you know, launching them and going out. Um this one's from a um former Lamborghini and Bugatti designer. He started his own company. He's based in California. The car's going to be built in Germany.

[00:00:56]Um but what's special about it to us, of course, is that Palmerston North like um because the engine was built by Hartley Engines, um which is a company owned by Nelson Hartley, who's a former racing driver. His dad was a racing driver who got both his sons into Formula 1. Um and Nelson kind of went off into the engine building route, and the other son, Brendon, uh went to Formula 1.

[00:01:19]So, Brendon Hartley is former Formula 1 driver. He's won Le Mans three times.

[00:01:24]He's won the World Endurance Championship with Toyota four times.

[00:01:27]He's incredibly you know, accomplished as a driver.

[00:01:31]Whereas Nelson is considered an absolute freak when it comes to designing and building engines. So, >> Clearly doing something right.

[00:01:38]What is, you know, you said that everyone's making a hypercar these days.

[00:01:43]What how significant I mean, do do they sell these? Do these get >> they do, but they're not big numbers. Um Nio are planning on doing 15 initially as uh track only cars, and then I think it's 54 road cars that they'll eventually build and sell.

[00:01:58]Yeah, the like I said, the the designer, the guy behind it was a former Lamborghini and Bugatti designer. He also worked for Koenigsegg, which is another extremely limited high-end, high-value hypercar maker.

[00:02:12]Like a Pagani, things like that. They're like a million, two million, three million dollar cars. They're not cheap.

[00:02:19]But um >> Like the one that could suck the road and stay on it.

[00:02:22]>> [laughter] >> I remember that episode. Hey, this is cool to look at, too. It's just So they've done engine They've tested the engine. When will we see it in action?

[00:02:31]>> Um I believe later this year they'll potentially have something. I'm not 100% sure. With these things they never sort of uh they nail the end dates too accurately because they just >> [snorts] >> don't know. But um Yeah, it's it's going to be The engine is going to be shipped over to Germany to the production facility and they'll go from there. So probably before the end of the year. Very cool.

[00:02:58]>> And does Neil lose I mean in terms of how it stacks up against the other hypercar makers that you're talking about? How does it rate rank? Don't know.

[00:03:06]>> This is literally the very first thing they've ever done. It's um yeah, just a very talented designer who's gone out on his own and he's got a very talented New Zealand engine builder to build an engine for him. So which is a nice little I mean hopefully you would hope that some extremely rich person that lives in New Zealand would consider it worthy of buying one and we may see one here one day.

[00:03:28]>> And uh Mike Hosking.

[00:03:30]>> [laughter] >> He loves cars, yeah.

[00:03:33]>> Yeah.

[00:03:33]>> Good to see this flying. Thank you.

[00:03:34]Thank you.