The Philippines Has A Homegrown Supercar, and It’s Lovely
There are certain countries on the globe that ooze supercardom. One of them just won the World Cup in fact, and you can delegate in the comments below as to what the others are. A country that certainly doesn’t come to mind is the Philippines, though that could change soon.
This is the Aurelio – a sleek, pretty-eyed wet-dream turned supercar, built by a four-man Philippine crew called Factor Aurelio Automobile. And to be honest, it isn’t exactly hard to tell what these guys were dreaming of at the time.
The Aurelio’s profile nips at the handsome contours of the Ferrari 458 Italia, the doors have an air of McLaren P1, and the rear end picks up some cues from the Lamborghini Aventador. However, those certainly aren’t bad jumping-off points, are they?
Specific details are a bit lacking on the Aurelio, but here’s what we can gather. The body is composed of fiberglass-reinforced-plastic with what looks like a few carbon fiber bits and bobs scattered throughout inside. Underneath the sleek body lies a tubular space frame chassis affixed with a turbocharged Mitsubishi 4G63 four-cylinder that allegedly boasts 457hp per ton, capable of shooting the Aurelio up to a top speed of 186mph.
According to The Manila Times, about 80 percent of the car’s components were sourced from within the Philippines, with the only exceptions being the wheels, brakes, engine, transmission, and a few suspension components. Talk about grassroots engineering.
All in all, it’s an impressive design, especially considering that the four guys who built it had to borrow money from relatives and pawn off some of their own possessions just to finish the first supercar prototypes. The company can produce about six to 10 units a year with their current manpower, which are pegged to go for about 1.6 million Philippine pesos or the equivalent of $37,000 a pop. Let’s hope these guys succeed.
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