Category: Eterniti

It’s just a blinged up Cayenne. That’s right this new Eterniti brand, for now, takes a Porsche Cayenne adds a carbon-fibre reinforced plastic body kit and says voila—a brand new car!

To be fair they say they do a chassis-up rebuild of the car, including a bespoke interior. They also manage to find in excess of 620hp lurking inside its 4.8 litre twin-turbo V8 engine (compared to 500hp in the Cayenne Turbo).

Production of the Hemera will start early next year with deliveries expected by mid-2012. You’ll need around £150,000 to get your foot in the door, but we suspect the options and customisation possibilities will see many prices well beyond that. So around double the price of a Cayenne Turbo, then.

To help give the brand some credibility, Eterniti is being assisted by former race engineer Alastair Macqueen and former F1 driver Johnny Herbert. Most will be up to speed with Herbert’s 10-year F1 career as well as his Le Mans success. Macqueen has likewise experienced victory at Le Mans, as a race engineer for Jaguar and Bentley.

Eterniti say they have more plans in store, including a high-performance car from which a racing program could be developed. So, what of this Hemera then, and of Eterniti as a brand; are they onto something? Can this Cayenne on steroids really be a Hemeraroid—a pain in the backside to the major luxury players?

You’re looking at a teaser for “the world’s first super-SUV”, otherwise known as the Eterniti Hemera. Are you excited? Well, if you’re in the market for an SUV with a “limousine-like rear cabin”, complete with iPads, and “4×4 ruggedness” with “dynamic performance” then you should be.

At least that’s what the press guff tells us. Not much in terms of real detail is given away, but we do get an inkling that this new Eterniti outfit will be little more than a custom shop with a prestigious London address.

Perhaps that’s selling them a little short, but they say they aim to cater to buyers in “global wealth centres” who want more luxury, more personalisation and more exclusivity. They will start the process of achieving this by repackaging “the latest generation of the best large SUV platform available.”

Hemera is the Greek goddess of daytime, if you care about those sorts of things. As sure as night turns into day there will always be someone trying to part a fool and his money. The Hemera might turn out to be one of the coolest things ever made or it could be a total embarrassment for its backers. What’s your money on?