Is The €6 Million RB17 Hypercar Peaking On Tech?

If that’s true, we live in very fast times. And nowhere is that need for speed better exemplified than in the incredible development of hypercars, those vehicular beasts that are built for one thing: ungodly performance on humanly constructed surfaces.

Hypercars are a niche of the automotive enthusiast world, where money meets adrenaline, and technology and engineering interlace with raw nerves. How else to describe someone spending millions on the world’s most expensive and fastest cars, risking their own life driving at speeds and cornering that—judged wrong—could lead to injury and death?

“The purpose of a hypercar is not just speed. It’s about delivering an experience that makes you feel alive every time you drive it,” states Christian von Koenigsegg, founder of what many people believe is the king of hypercars, Swedish brand Koenigsegg, which is the producer of the 1,600hp Jesko.

“If you’re a car enthusiast, you want to talk to the beast; you want to have a dialogue,” he says with a smile.

Jay Leno—the undisputed king of car collecting and hypercar enthusiast from his Lamborghini Miura days in the 1970s to his most recent purchase of the McLaren W1 (1,257hp, €2.1M)—describes his view on why hypercars have the allure they do: “I like cars that show what people can do when they really try.”

Minds to Matter

That attempt at pushing through boundaries, showing what engineering and great innovation can do, has been going through a furious cycle of performance that’s almost unique in the history of cars. The most outstanding metric to demonstrate this is horsepower.

Starting in the early 2000s, many mused that peak horsepower was being attained with cars such as the Ferrari F40 or the Lamborghini Diablo, and that—nearing 500hp—a certain barrier would be reached that would only be incrementally exceeded. That, however, was soon surpassed by cars such as the Pagani Zonda and the McLaren F1 at 627hp.

By mid-2005, the Veyron 16.4 reached 1,000hp, and, in 2015, the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport hit 1,200hp.

Then the explosion occurred, in both ICE motors and the latest introduction to horsepower, electrification. Hypercars such as the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut, with a 5.0-litre twin-turbo V8, as well as the Bugatti Mistral 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16, clocked in at an insane 1,578hp.

But what really caught the automotive world’s attention was the all-electric Rimac Nevera, a beast that pushed out an incredible 1,914hp of torque and pure speed, a feat that now marks the benchmark. What’s more, that doubling came in under a decade, something that hadn’t happened since cars were first created.

“When we started the company, people told us electric cars couldn’t be exciting,” says Mate Rimac, founder of Rimac Motors, proudly. “Now we have a car with nearly two thousand horsepower that breaks records everywhere.”

Still, a shift has started that is moving beyond power, a conversation on the fundamentals of the physics of grip, aerodynamics, and other factors being the limiter of speed.

“I’m not interested in chasing power figures. The real challenge in car design is reducing weight, improving efficiency, and creating a car that communicates with the driver,” Gordon Murray, the famous designer of the McLaren P1, F1, and others, states flatly.

“You can always add more horsepower, but that doesn’t necessarily make a better car,” he adds, drawing attention to the fact that the latest hypercars coming out this year have other aspects elevated.

Newer than Newey

The perfect visionary of that post-2,000hp paradigm is a man who many regard as one of the greatest hypercar designers of all time. Adrian Newey—engineer, aerodynamicist, automotive designer, and motorsport executive—has seen his star rise to new levels as the Brit left a four-time champion team in Red Bull F1 Racing and found himself the team principal of Aston Martin for the 2026 season.

Ironically, he’s also designed two of the fastest hypercars for the consumer market: the Valkyrie, a 1,170hp car with a carbon-fibre chassis and no rear window, cameras for mirrors, and a tight two-seat cabin requiring racing-style harnesses. Soon, Newey’s incredible final project for Red Bull Racing Technologies will be unleashed—the highly anticipated RB17.

The RB17 is the perfect representation of how other aspects of the hypercar have taken centre stage, above the pursuit of power as the primary premise.

“The fascinating thing is how close modern road cars are getting to racing car levels of performance,” Newey declares of the RB17 and its hypercar brethren.

The RB17 is powered by a bespoke hybrid powertrain centred around a 4.5-litre V10 developed by Cosworth, designed to rev to 15,000rpm. The bodywork reflects a strong emphasis on aerodynamic efficiency, with hockey-stick-style LED headlamps, reworked cooling channels, and a pronounced fin integrated into the engine cover.

Although its overall footprint is comparable to that of an F1 car, the RB17 is engineered to meet road-legal requirements, hence the inclusion of mirrors and windscreen wipers. A notable design revision places the exhaust outlet along the spine of the engine cover, a change intended to optimise packaging and airflow.

Newey has left the project and serves only as a consultant, but many see the RB17 as the next stage in the great hypercar race.

“Each generation of high-performance cars resets the limits of what engineers once thought possible,” explains Karl Ludvigsen, an automotive historian, who went on to say that what we’re really witnessing is the blurring of the line between the highest level of motoring performance—Formula 1—and a car that you can buy.

That car, the RB17, will set you back €6 million (RM27.5 million) and is limited to only 50 customers. But keep your eyes posted on the blur that sweeps around the track: the race for even greater power, performance, and speed in a vehicle that normal humans can buy and race stays apace.