By the time most boutique hypercars have finished their first digital render, the Capricorn 01 Zagato has already built three working prototypes and shipped one of them across Europe. The latest version landed at the Retromobile show in Paris just months after the car’s first public appearance in Belgium, making one thing very clear: this isn’t a vaporware fantasy—it’s a functioning, fire-breathing machine.

The first Capricorn 01 appeared in classy Verde Knokke green over brown leather, a look that nodded politely toward Italian grand-tourer tradition. The Paris car, however, throws subtlety out the window. Finished in a vivid Giallo Sole yellow with blue suede inside, it looks less like a vintage Zagato tribute and more like something that escaped from a modern Le Mans paddock.

And that’s exactly the point.

Capricorn describes both versions as “engineering-driven vehicles,” which sounds like marketing fluff until you realize that they’re fully operational prototypes, not static show cars. Even more impressive, a third example is already being assembled at the company’s facility in Mönchengladbach, Germany. This is a startup acting like a serious manufacturer.

The Zagato influence is unmistakable. The trademark double-bubble roof arches over the cockpit, while almond-shaped headlights peer out from an aggressively sculpted nose. The body is packed with race-bred aerodynamic elements, including flying rear struts that recall the Ford GT, gullwing doors, a deeply channeled hood with twin exhaust outlets, and a full-width light bar across the rear. It looks dramatic because it is.

Inside, the Capricorn 01 rejects modern touchscreen minimalism in favor of something far more tactile. There’s a cluster of matching analog dials, a visible open-gate manual shifter, and a round steering wheel fitted with rotary controls. Blue suede, exposed carbon fiber, and modern racing buckets complete a cockpit that feels more like a homologation special than a luxury hypercar.

But the real story sits behind the seats.

The Capricorn 01 is built around a carbon-fiber monocoque and powered by a mid-mounted, supercharged 5.2-liter V8 sourced from Ford and heavily reworked. Output is claimed to exceed 900 metric horsepower and 1,000 Nm of torque—numbers that put it firmly in the upper reaches of the hypercar world.

That power goes only to the rear wheels through a five-speed manual transmission, which feels almost rebellious in a segment obsessed with dual-clutch gearboxes and all-wheel drive. With a curb weight under 1,200 kilograms, Capricorn claims a 0–100 km/h time under three seconds and a top speed of 360 km/h. Whether those figures survive independent testing remains to be seen, but the power-to-weight ratio suggests they’re not fantasy.

The first customer cars are scheduled for delivery later this year, and Capricorn says only a “minimum number” of the planned 19 units are still available, each priced at €2.95 million. That puts the 01 Zagato directly in the crosshairs of Ferrari, McLaren, Bugatti, Koenigsegg, and Pagani—names that usually don’t lose sleep over newcomers.

But Capricorn isn’t exactly new to the business of going fast. The company has supplied lightweight components to Porsche’s LMP1 program, Peugeot Sport’s Le Mans and Dakar racers, Mercedes, Lotus, and Caterham in Formula 1, and Volkswagen’s WRC effort. This may be their first road car, but they’ve been quietly shaping the racing world for years.

The Capricorn 01 Zagato doesn’t feel like a startup’s hopeful first step. It feels like a company finally deciding to put its name on something wild. And if the prototypes are any indication, the hypercar establishment just got a bright yellow new problem.

Source: Zagato

In an era when hypercars come loaded with electric motors, digital dashboards, and more drive modes than a Formula 1 car, Capricorn and Zagato have gone in the opposite direction. Their new creation—the Capricorn 01 Zagato—is a defiant celebration of analog purity: a 900bhp, rear-drive, manual-gearbox missile designed not for algorithms, but for enthusiasts.

A Purist’s Weapon

At the heart of this striking Italian-German collaboration sits a supercharged 5.2-liter Ford V8, tuned by Capricorn’s motorsport engineers to produce a mountain-moving 738 lb-ft of torque and “more than” 900 PS (888bhp). The numbers are still provisional pending homologation, but even conservatively, that’s enough to make it one of the most powerful cars ever fitted with a five-speed dog-leg manual gearbox.

Power goes exclusively to the rear wheels, and with a curb weight of under 1,200 kilograms, the 01 Zagato’s power-to-weight ratio sits in the same rarefied air as the McLaren P1 and Ferrari LaFerrari. Capricorn says it’ll rocket from 0 to 62 mph in under three seconds and top out at 224 mph.

Form Follows Function—Beautifully

Zagato’s chief designer Norihiko Harada aimed to create something that could “stand the test of time,” and he may have done just that. The Capricorn 01 avoids the trap of contemporary hypercar excess—no towering rear wing, no sci-fi cameras in place of mirrors. Instead, its carbonfibre skin channels airflow through an intricately sculpted floor, generating substantial ground-effect downforce without resorting to add-on aero clutter.

The result is a car that looks as though it could have graced a Le Mans grid in the 1970s, yet it’s entirely modern beneath the surface.

Race-Bred Core

Built around a carbonfibre monocoque chassis inspired by LMP1 endurance racers, the 01 Zagato benefits from Capricorn’s deep motorsport experience. Braking is handled by carbon-ceramic discs gripped by six-piston Brembo calipers, while steering assistance is delivered electronically at low speeds—then disengages entirely at pace for undiluted feedback.

As Capricorn CEO Robertino Wild puts it, “Our target was to achieve a constant and predictable downforce distribution for stability—not an ultra-high number that makes the car nervous.” In other words, this is a car built to reward precision, not punish imperfection.

The Analog Experience

Open the gull-wing doors and you step into a cockpit that’s closer to a vintage race car than a modern supercar. A large analog tachometer dominates the dash; digital displays are practically nonexistent. The seats are bolted directly to the chassis, and instead of moving the seats, the pedal box and gear lever adjust to fit the driver.

There’s no touchscreen—just a small retractable screen for the reversing camera. Drive modes (Comfort, Sport, Track) are selected via a rotary dial on the steering wheel, and that’s about as high-tech as it gets.

Exclusivity Defined

Just 19 examples of the Capricorn 01 Zagato will be built, each priced from €2.95 million (around £2.56m) before tax. Every car will be homologated for European roads, including the UK, making this one of the few true analog hypercars you could—at least theoretically—drive to the shops.

Interestingly, Capricorn had originally been tapped to produce the De Tomaso P72, another carbon-bodied manual hypercar, before that project shifted to HWA. With the 01 Zagato, Capricorn seems determined to make its own mark on the modern hypercar landscape—one that values engagement over automation, and timeless beauty over fleeting tech trends.

In a world increasingly driven by software, the Capricorn 01 Zagato is a welcome rebellion—a car that remembers what driving used to feel like.

Source: Autocar