This Was The Most Interesting Overpriced New Car At Monterey Car Week

There’s this event at Monterey Car Week called the Quail: A Motorsports Gathering. Personally, I think that full name is kind of pretentious, but I got a PR company all cross at me last time I made fun of it, so I’ll let it slide. There’s a lot of interesting stuff at the Quail, including a colossal inflatable bellhop and Road & Track‘s free caviar bar. Seriously, both those things are real.

The Quail is also known for having a shocking number of automotive supercar startups showing off their stuff, and they’re almost always low, wide, wedge-ish shaped supercars with doors that open in novel and funny ways and huge mid-mounted engines making thousands of horsepower and costing more than a whole truckload of fresh human kidneys, individually wrapped.

There were plenty of those this year, of course, and I’ll admit that at this point, I’m getting pretty blind to these things, since these kinds of wildly expensive supercars, even if they actually get built, are so inaccessible and removed from the actual normal-person world of driving that they really just don’t matter.

One of these startup supercar companies at the Quail this year actually did manage to catch my attention, because they seemed to be doing something actually different, and had a car that actually stood out from the crowds, especially the crowd of your standard low, wide, carbon-fiber-slathered funny-door supercars. That company was Dacora, and they’re building a striking-looking, retro-inspired, gargantuan EV, slathered with exotic high-end materials.

Of course, the first thing you notice about the Dacora is the design, which feels vaguely late ’30s to early ’40s, an Art Deco-ish sort of thing. There’s a number of cars where I could sense inspiration came from, though the founder of the company MIT engineering grad Kristie D’Ambrosio-Correll would only confirm one of my guesses, the Chrysler Airflow.

I see some Tatra and Skoda and Adler in there, too, but I may be projecting, of course. Sure, the look is perhaps verging on caricature, but I still like it; it’s striking and fun and non-boring, and if you’re going to be dropping a ton of money on a car, why be subtle? Who said there has to be restraint for a comfortable, big, expensive car? Why not evoke an alternate world where zeppelin travel is common and everyone dresses in smart suits and everything is elegant and exuberant?

What I especially like about Dacora is what they’re not doing: developing an EV drivetrain. They say they have a drivetrain with an 800 horsepower motor and 400 miles of range and while I believe that range number as much as I believe in the Tooth Fairy and her global empire of child tooth-collection (which are sold to piano key and cue ball manufacturing concerns), I do respect that they understand that now is the time for coachbuilding companies, ones that make bodies and use existing platforms and drivetrains.

Because, really, what would they bring to the table that’s not already available? The dirty secret is that EV drivetrains really aren’t all that different, so why waste time and money developing something no one is going to notice as being any different than any other EV?

Now, D’Ambrosio-Correll wouldn’t tell us just whose EV platform they were using, but they did say it was an American one, and I have my suspicions. David thought he recognized some suspension parts from a Tesla, and found at least one part sticker that seemed to confirm this, and looking at some pictures from Dacora’s press release, I think I see Tesla wheels and seats:

We asked D’Ambrosio-Correll about this in an interview (which we’ll have soon) but until then we have this short reel:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by The Autopian (@theautopian)

Those Tesla wheels and seats didn’t stick around, of course. There’s custom full-disc, more retro period-appropriate wheels and some very fancy interior fittings far beyond Tesla’s offerings.

I especially like how they’re handling their digital displays: they’re projected through the wood, a fun party trick, and a nice way to hide a big dumb touchscreen.

The physical brochure I was given shows four different seating configurations, ranging from four to six seats, and one three-seater dictator’s spec, where a Very Important Somebody can take up the whole back half of the car.

There are luggage areas front and rear, and that long hood hides a frunk that’s so huge it’s almost truck-bed sized; Dacora says a full-sized skis can be stuck in there. I think the founder even mentioned something about tailgate-style seating under that long wooden hood? Or maybe just organizing systems. It’s big, I know that much.

Dacora plans to build these in the Hudson Valley of New York, and they’d like $500,000 of your dollars if you want one of these striking cars. They say they’ve had a substantial number of pre-orders already, at full price (!), which is, um, surprising. I’m not sure I think $500,000 makes sense for this or, well, almost anything outside of a spacecraft, if I’m honest, but if they can get takers at that price, fantastic.

What I’d love to see is this coachbuilding approach applied to cars that sell for something more reasonable, say $100,000 to $200,000 or so, which is still plenty of money. Really, I’d like to see many more companies using this approach popping up, taking EV skateboards and popping on interesting bodies. I’ve been saying this for a decade!

I’m very curious to see where this goes; it usually seems like these sorts of companies show some bold ideas and then we never see them again; I’m hoping this one will be different.