Autocar writers' cars of 2021: Pininfarina Battista

With 1876bhp, is there any wonder the upcoming electric hypercar was Matt Prior's motoring highlight of the past twelve months?

Three cars have really stood out for me this year.

One, the Caterham Seven 170, has a mere 660 cubic centimetres of three-cylinder engine capacity and makes just the 84bhp. It’s a joy. Two is the Hyundai i20 N, a car that I found incredibly easy to adore. It’s light, has the ‘right’ amount of power and is so agile and adjustable that it’s pretty much everything I want in a small hot hatchback.

Then there’s the third. And, well, it goes about life in a slightly different manner.

The Pininfarina Battista exists basically to say that Pininfarina exists as a. carmaker as well as the famous design house. There’ll only be 150 Battistas and they’ll each cost £2m. They’re electric. And they have 1876bhp. Pininfarina’s follow-up EVs won’t be like this.

Pininfarina calls the Battista the world’s first electric hyper GT car. Now, I don’t know about you, but the Battista, as well as two other electric hypercars the Rimac Nevera which is broadly similar underneath, and the Lotus Evija, which isn’t, were not things I’d expect to call driver’s cars.

They weigh two tonnes or thereabouts – 2.2 in the Battista’s case – and that is not conducive to making a car fun to drive, even if it can do 217mph and 0- 62mph in less than two seconds.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself enjoying the Battista a great deal. But not, for all things, because of its straight line speed. I mean, that is hilarious, in a way.

But what I found more compelling is that with four motors the Battista can put power to whichever wheel it wants, whenever it wants, and each wheel can have so much power, and the motor response is so fast, that it can do things that no internally combusted car can hope to do. It’s hilariously adjustable. Also, it has so much power that short straights almost cease to exist, so you’re cornering a lot of the time.

Yes, I know it’s two million quid and I know you can’t use 1900hp except in all but exceptional circumstances and that 2.2 tonnes and its two metre width makes the Battista honestly not a sports car for the road and that in the real world, the i20N and Caterham 170 are my heroes. But the Pininfarina does things no other car I’ve ever tried can do. And it’s not often you can say that.