Robb Report Singapore March 2022

WITH MARCH AND our Dream Machines issue come the promise of high-octane excitement. We take a look at the marvellous world of cars, bikes, boats and jets to showcase some of the coolest machines to take you from point A to infinity. To kick-start the ride, a conversation with hypercar designer and manufacturer Horacio Pagani reveals how he looks to Leonard da Vinci for inspiration and also which Porsche he wishes he had. In the hypercar league of which the eponymous Pagani belongs, the 1,578hp Bugatti Chiron Super Sport represents a bittersweet zenith for the era of combustion engine one-upmanship, a bold pure petrol plant running on regular fuel and available for purchase now. Created as the counterpoint to the original Chiron, this latest Bugatti is meant to be a refined…

Spread A Little Sunshine Hermes pays tribute to the sun with its aptly named Soleil d’Hermes collection. Illustrator Arielle de Brichambaut’s graphic motifs recall stylised palm trees, while La Table Hermes’s creative director Benoit Pierre Emery harmonises the colours, materials and design to welcome the sunnier months ahead. The gamut of items in this 24-piece collection includes plates for presentation, pasta, soup, dessert, bread and butter, as well as salad bowls, deep and tart platters, and also mugs, breakfast, tea and coffee cups with accompanying saucers, and a small tray. Let’s Party! With house parties becoming commonplace, one might consider the ebullient charms of Louis Vuitton’s latest Party Trunk. While this hardsided’s visual roots lie in the maison’s iconic 19th-century trunk, its proposed utility is very much tailored for present-day revelry. As a…

AS AN AUTOMOTIVE journalist of a certain vintage, I get approached from time to time for the occasional special project. A few years ago, I worked with a private-equity house that was considering investing in small British sports-carmakers. As part of our research, we identified 22 new or revived brands that had launched over the previous 15 years, such as Invicta and Austin-Healey. Of those 22 start-ups, just one had survived: Ariel, which is still making its extreme, exoskeletal two-seaters to great acclaim but in tiny numbers. Designing a new car is the easy bit; building it to scale with doors that thunk nicely is really hard. Ariel has endured by not bothering with either scale or doors – nor a windshield (unless ordered), roof nor pretty much any of the…

L’Empire des Lumières by René Magritte Bidding commences on 2 March through Sotheby’s in London Due to make its long-awaited market debut at Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction in London, this 1961 work by René Magritte will be offered with an estimate in excess of US$60 million. It is considered one of the most desirable works of modern art still remaining in private hands, having been painted for the daughter of Magritte’s patron – the Belgian surrealist collector Pierre Crowet – and has remained in the family ever since. So arresting is the painting’s visual power that it is seen as a definitive image of surrealist art, going so far as to inspire a scene in the 1973 film The Exorcist. Lacquered Fengshi-style Jingtao qin Auctioned by Bonhams in Hong Kong for HK$9.9…

LIKE LEONARDO DA VINCI, the Renaissance master who inspires him, Horacio Pagani resides at the intersection of creativity and analytics. A true outlier, the 66-year-old hypercar designer and manufacturer combines latent talent, an innovative approach and enough flair to develop a model line that’s arguably the most exclusive in production: Fabergé eggs – crafted from noble alloys and bleeding-edge composites – capable of 354km/h (and more). Hailing from Casilda, Argentina, Horacio completed the construction of a single-seat race car for the Formula 2 Championship series at the age of 24. Soon drawn to Italy, he helped Lamborghini pioneer the use of composite materials before starting his own atelier, Modena Design. It was all building to the formation of Pagani Automobili and the debut of his Zonda C12 at the 1999 Geneva…

So here it is: peak internal-combustion engine. Since Karl Benz built his Patent Motorwagen 135 years ago, carmakers have been refining and emboldening the petrol-guzzling power plant that still propels most of our cars, but we’ve finally reached a tipping point. Automakers are announcing they’re ceasing the development of conventional engines in favour of hybrid and electric power trains, even setting dates by which they’ll no longer offer the former at all. Bugatti is no exception. Now with a majority of it controlled by supercar and electric vehicle-technology start-up Rimac, the French marque will go hybrid for its next all-new model, eventually to be followed by a fully electric vehicle. But the recent launch of Bugatti’s 1,578hp Chiron Super Sport marks this bittersweet moment perfectly. Not only is it the fastest,…