Art Basel Miami is an annual event for kooky art types. Y’know, the people who see a banana from a local supermarket gaffer taped to a wall and think, ‘that’s amazing! I should pay $120k for that!’ only for it to be eaten by a performance artist. But some incredible cars rocked up to South Beach too.
Photos: Zach Brehl
See, Art Basel is fertile ground for the rich. Rich people who like cars. So the folks at Supercar Owners Circle decided to hold a little get together for rich people who like cars and take their name very literally by making a circle of owner’s supercars.
But that’s only because they ran out of room on the 56th floor of a condo. And not any condo, but the Porsche Design Tower. Opened in March 2017, it was developed by Dezer Properties and designed by architect Sieger Suarez, with interiors by Michael Wolk Design Associates and Porsche Design. If you’re a hardcore Porschephile, this is where you want to live.
The standout feature is a robotic parking carousel that delivers your car into your living room, regardless of the floor. See, this lot is in the penthouse, nearly 60 floors up.
All you have to do is drive your car into the cylinder at the core of the building, where a turntable spins the car toward the elevator doors. With the car in position, the doors open and a skid slides underneath, locks around the wheels, and pulls the vehicle into the elevator before sending it up to your apartment.
But there’s more. If you’re a resident you have access to Porsche vending machines full of Porsche-branded merch and $550 Porsche sunglasses. But you have to stump up anywhere between $4 million (rm16.57 million) to $32.5 million (RM134.65 million) for an apartment.
If you didn’t know, Supercar Owners Circle wants to connect like-minded people together and offer experiences you can’t get elsewhere. Admission to the club (limited to 150 members globally) is granted to those who have a collection of machinery deemed worthy.
Applicants are judged on their collection, not as a form of one-upmanship, but to keep the club diverse and free of riff-raff. Once in, you get Grand Prix invites, bespoke track days, fast-track passes from manufacturers to its latest and greatest hypercars and Alpine road trips where the roads have been closed for you
This was SOC’s first event in America, and they managed to pull in some big cars. Notably, a haul of Rimac Concept Ones.
Not one, not two…
… but three C1s showed up – the most that’s ever been together outside the factory. As a reminder, the C1 was Rimac’s first car, with 1,088bhp, 1,180lb ft and 0-186mph in just 14.2 seconds. It’s got four motors – one for each wheel – each with their own inverter and gearbox. This means all four corners could be controlled independently, giving all-wheel torque vectoring.
Talking of art. Cars don’t much more arty than Pagani’s Hyuara. Horacio Pagani is an automotive artist who has an insatiable love of detail. Things like the 3,000 bolts that have each been individually branded, the key sculpted from a milled billet of aluminum into the shape of the car, and the glorious leather straps restraining the clamshell.
What’s better than one Ferrari Pista? Two Ferrari Pistas. Red or blue - which would you have?
The Veyron is ageing gracefully, isn’t it? Still bloody quick regardless.
Oh, and here’s another one. Because they’re ten a penny in Miami.
A topless Italian V12 with Formula One DNA. Is there a better car to cruise South Beach? Probably not.
The evolution of the hypercar right there. Vmax king, track hoon or electric nutjob. Which would you want in your garage?
