APEX: The Story Of The Hypercar is a fascinating documentary that follows the ideology and innovation behind the world’s current crop of performance heavyweights from Porsche, Ferrari, McLaren, Koenigsegg and Pagani as it attempts to define them. But there’s one spoken line in the first two minutes of the film that perfectly defines the idea of the hypercar, which is that “something better is possible.”
The documentary, which is currently available on Netflix and is a must watch, talks to prominent figures of the automotive industry and goes through the motions of defining a hypercar, or the hypercar, as being a combination of sport, art, experience, ego, imagination, passion, innovation, and all of the rest of it.
Yet it’s Alex Roy who perfectly defines the hypercar in the very opening of the film when he says, “a child looking at [a car] will say ‘something better is possible.’”
And that’s exactly what is so exciting about the concept of developing the ultimate car. Not just that whatever happens to be the fastest, most powerful car on the market right now is the pinnacle of innovation or as good as it gets—no, what’s even more exciting is the thought that no matter where the engineering is at, somebody one day will do something better.
APEX highlights the chance occurrence that Porsche, McLaren and Ferrari all embarked on hybrid powertrain hypercars at the same time, marking it as the big shift in how we approach the engineering of modern cars. Yet, the film breaks away to focus on Christian Von Koenigsegg, who is very cleverly engineering hypercars, with perfect power to weight ratios and gear-less transmissions, which truly challenge the title of “fastest car in the world” while being far removed from the culture and practices of its competition.
It’s this weaving back and forth between the various approaches each company is making towards creating the fastest car on the planet that proves that there is always something better already in the works.
As we drive this new generation of hypercars, and write and read about them and lust after them, it’s with the subconscious knowledge that the next great thing is already being worked on. It’s so unbelievable today to think that we could ever push faster beyond where we are right now, and yet we also are aware that endeavors to do exactly that are well into development.
Someone out there is already working on something better, and that’s the magic of the hypercar. It’s where engineering and ego meet in what could be considered an expression of pure optimism—it’s so good now, the performance is so unbelievable, and yet it’s only going to go farther and get better.
“It’s not about going fast, it’s about being fast. It’s about elevating human experience to places we’ve never been before.”
Check out APEX: The Story Of The Hypercar on Netflix. It’s a good time.