Mundus Senescit

Shayton Equilibrium

Background

This is the new Shayton Equilibrium. It’s the newest hyper car released upon the world. And as you can see, it looks good. I would even go so far as to say it’s the best looking car I have seen in a long while, possibly ever. It reminds me a lot of the Ferrari Enzo, but has rounded off the harder lines to make its design more modern. This is the first car made by Shayton Automotive, a division of Provoco. The word ‘shayton’ originally comes from the Sioux language and means ‘falcon’ (I know, it makes sense looking at the company’s emblem above). The Slovenian company is new to the automotive industry and plans to make a grand entrance with their Equilibrium. In their press release they named the new hyper car “the god of speed”. This god comes with a serious price tag (to be expected given its hyper car status) of 1,000,000 € (roughly $1.4 million).  Production was originally specified on the Shayton website as being set at 15 a year (20 in the first year, 5 of which are special edition). Since then the site lists production as “N/A” leaving it up in the air as to how many will be produced. Right now they are looking for investments to make the first prototype as all these images are rendering of how the vehicle will look once produced.

2012 Shayton Equilibrium

Performance

For a first iteration hyper car, Shayton really delivers the performance for the Equilibrium. Powering this “god of speed” is a V12 of an undisclosed displacement pushing 1084hp and 686 lb-ft of torque at 5,000 RPMs. The Equilibrium should weigh in at a lowly 2,600 lbs. All that power is expected to deliver a 0-60 time of 2.9 seconds and a top speed of 250mph.

2012 Shayton Equilibrium Interior

Competitors

Direct competitors to the $1.4 million Shayton Equilibrium include the $1.3 mil Pagani Huayra, the $1.4 mil Koenigsegg Agera R, and of course, the $1.7 mil Bugatti Veyron 16.4.  All three come in well above the $1 million mark and have horsepower ratings hovering around 1,000hp.

Pagani Huayra

Koenigsegg Agera R

Bugatti Veyron 16.4

Wrap-Up

There is no doubt that the Shayton Equilibrium would be a serious competitor in the hyper car market. The major challenge facing Shayton is that nobody has ever heard of them. If someone is buying a car that costs more than most people’s homes they want people to know it when they say the brand name. 99% of the world has never heard of Shayton, and until that changes they’re going to have some trouble. The car looks phenomenal and it has the performance (at least on paper) to make it in the hyper car industry. If they manage to get the funding to get their car into production and a solid marketing campaign to the uber-wealthy they should do pretty well.

Nevertheless, I would say there is absolutely no reason for cars costing as much as hyper cars to even exist. They deliver performance that can’t be utilized unless on a track and can be had for far less. Even if I had Bill-Gates money, I would have trouble shelling out the MSRP of any of these hyper cars when the money could be put to such better use elsewhere. I might be willing to treat myself to a McClaren MP4-12C or a 458 Italia, but even those cars are pushing the limits of sensible/responsible spending IMO. There are many exceptional vehicles for under $100,000 which makes it pretty difficult to justify anything more, let alone $1,400,000. But, if you’re set on spending that money I would say the Shayton Equilibrium comes closest to truly looking “like a million bucks.”

If you want to learn more about the Shayton Equilibrium and didn’t click the link above click this one. I’ve also included a slideshow of the Equilibrium below.