A 34-year-old United Kingdom-based Zimbabwean, Ameerh Naran, has manufactured a supercar, Naran, fulfilling a dream he had when he was only four (4).
The 1 048 brake-horse-power “hyper-coupé” is currently in production in Germany. Naran said since that tender age, he has been working to make his dream real. He said:
I was four when I decided my purpose in life was to build my own supercar company.
Naran is proud of his home country and has incorporated a fish eagle – Zimbabwe’s national symbol – into the Naran Automotive logo. He also pointed out that his jet operations staff are all employed in Harare. He said:
Zimbabwe afforded me an incredible upbringing and I do what I can to give back.
Naran is making 48 of the four-seater cars initially and offering buyers the chance to customise pretty much everything.
Prices for the supercar start at £850 000 (US$1.1 million), but Naran expects most builds will exceed £1m (US$1,3million).
The London-based engineer says his customers come from sport, music, and big business adding that all of them have already expensively stocked garages. Speaking of the cars, the design for which he is revealing today, Naran said:
We’ve got a client who’s big into horses and we’re working out a way to do the interior using horsehair. We have another client who has a tattoo on his body that we’re embroidering into the car.
He recalls that as a teenager, he wrote to Ian Callum, the renowned Aston Martin and Jaguar designer, and Adrian van Hooydonk, head of design at BMW who advised him to leave Harare to study industrial design at Brighton University and then automotive design at Coventry.
He also got into car racing, and at one point thought his fortune might lie in Formula 1 but at 23, gained exclusive operating rights across Africa for an American private jet firm.
When that company failed, he launched his own brokerage, Vimana Private Jets, which is now funding Naran Automotive, as well as providing a pretty handy mailing list.
Naran, who had returned to Harare to run his jet business, settled in London three years ago to pursue his automotive dream.
Ameerh Naran, Zimbabwean Private Jet Entrepreneur Launching The World’s Next Hypercar
His team is comprised of Steve Pegg, his chief operating officer, a veteran engineer from Aston Martin, Landrover, and a series of electric car startups; Jowyn Wong, formerly of McLaren and now a specialist in niche hypercars, who leads the design team, while Kate Montgomery, a freelance materials consultant, is in charge of the bespoke interiors.
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