Vanity Fair UK – September 2019

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By Er in Baker

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BOULEVARD OF ECO-DREAMS

Erin Baker is granted exclusive access to the extraordinary Pininfarina Battista electric hypercar—the world's most powerful road-legal vehicle

Torque of the Town An exclusive twirl

in the surreal Pininfarina Battista electric

hypercar—plus new-age supercars

The Pininfarina Battista is the world’s

fastest, and most powerful road-legal

car, and we had an exclusive twirl

round the palm-fringed boulevards of

LA in a design mule, with one of the

four electric motors whirring away. The

real thing starts production next year.

The figures are surreal, and

impossible to equate to anything else,

other than perhaps NASA’s latest

rocket. For a start, it will cost you

around £2 million, and that’s before

you specify what you want in your

hand-built edition, which will be one of

just 150 cars worldwide. 

Pininfarina

BATTISTA

Women have long been in love with

luxury design. A brief glance at the

history of the handbag, the shoe or the

watch shows how much we are prepared

to pay for the line of beauty, whether

it’s the artful grace of a Christian

Louboutin, or the mechanical structure

of an Omega Speedmaster. It’s small

wonder, given the increasing disposable

wealth women now command, that

they have become attracted to the

supercar and makers of supercars have

become attracted to them.

In the UK alone, there are 11.8 million

female motorists, a figure rising faster

than that of male drivers. In the US,

women own 60 per cent of private wealth.

You don’t have to be a soothsayer to

see that successful women are starting

to determine the vicissitudes of the

high-performance car market, drawn by

the potent status symbols that Ferraris,

Lamborghinis, Astons and Bentleys

remain. I was recently appointed to

Lamborghini’s new Female Advisory

Board (FAB), where senior executive

women from music, art, millinery,

finance, motorsport and healthcare

explore the relationship between women

and wealth to better understand how to

connect women and fast cars.

En Route has driven the best of this

year’s supercars. With the exception of

the incredible Pininfarina, all are

convertibles (while men still opt for the

“hardcore” coupé versions; most women

prefer the lifestyle option of an open

roof ). If that’s the future, let’s crack on.

VANITY FAIR EN ROUTE SEPTEMBER 2019

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