Meet the Sanrivatti One: 800bhp V10, 1,100kg, and a motorbike-style driving position

What is it that modern supercars get wrong? Well if you listen to new start-up Sanrivatti it’s the most basic thing of all: the driving position. Sitting on your backside is so passe.

Instead they have created the ‘Apex Position’, a motorbike riding position inside a car. Yes, head first. Not even joking.

The car is called the One, and it’s a single seat track-going hypercar - although the word seat is doing some heavy lifting here. It’s more of a saddle-cum-massage-couch arrangement that puts the steering wheel out ahead of you, and the pedals behind on either side. Car controls note, not handlebars.

Photography: Dennis Noten

The promise is a ‘new relationship between driver, machine and circuit’. As long as that relationship isn’t ‘head first into a barrier’, we’re here for it. Because the world’s billionaires need wacky ways to spend their money and we need fun ways to laugh at them.

If McMurtry can sell them a car that sucks and Tesla can flog them a car that falls with style, then why not this one that plays with the very idea of how you should sit in a car?

The proportions are slightly unconventional, the windscreen more upright and further forward as part of a canopy that will pivot forward, but the rest of the car follows the track car template pretty closely. Gaping intakes, big wings, carbon brakes, magnesium wheels, slick tyres and pushrod suspension.

It also has similarities with another single seat machine: McLaren’s Solus GT. Like that it will feature a Judd Power naturally aspirated V10 and a sequential paddleshift racing gearbox.

And if you really cast your mind back you might remember that McLaren did create a head first driving position for one of their cars. OK, it was the Vision Gran Turismo and it never broke free from the gaming world.

There’s no mention of price yet from the Dutch/Uruguayan firm (there’s a combo you never knew you needed). All that exists at the moment is a full scale model and a prototype, built up around a Porsche Boxster.

What’s 800bhp going to feel like in an 1,100kg car that you drive lying on your belly? Well billionaires, allow Top Gear to suggest skipping breakfast. And maybe some core strength exercises.