Welcome to the Kimera EVO38 Collezione Martini: more power, more… Martini

Kimera, purveyor of Top Gear’s best performance car of the year, has given its EVO38 a bit of an update. And by ‘bit’, we mean ‘fill it with more power and more Martini’. Welcome to the limited edition – and unutterably gorgeous – Collezione Martini.

We won’t repeat some of the purpleness from Kimera’s official release – including gems like “there are colours that do not belong only to speed. They belong to time itself” – because the enhancements to this 10/10 car need no additional embellishment.

The car’s base 2.1-litre supercharged and turbocharged four-cylinder engine – itself carried over from the equally brilliant EVO37 – can now run on E85 ethanol and gets an additional intercooler with high-pressure cold water injectors. Kimera’s so proud of that engine, it’s now been “deliberately left exposed” at the back.

So where before the EVO38 made 600bhp, here, in Collezione Martini trim, it now makes 640bhp, torque jumps to 516lb ft, and the redline creeps up by 500rpms to 8,200. That’s… raspy.

Helped, no doubt, by new air intakes on the front bonnet said to better that hard-working unit’s cooling (as well as cooling the dampers, and yeesh, that’s hardcore). There’s a ceramic exhaust system able to manage what Kimera calls “extreme” temperatures (sensing a theme yet?), lots of exposed carbon fibre, centrelock wheels, and a funky set of rally lights.

Kimera hasn’t revealed how many it’s building, only to say the number is “vanishingly limited”, and only a handful remain. The colours available are the excellent shades you see above: Pearl White, Vermouth Red and Dry Green. Bella.