Stuart Milne clapped eyes on one yesterday, and says it's at least as sensational as anything from Ferrari or Lamborghini.

Kids with certain names are guaranteed a rough ride at school. Ben and Bradley Day came in for plenty of ribbing by virtue of being known as the Bidet Brothers at mine.

Heaven only knows what terror Roland Gumpert would have experienced in his formative years if he had grown up in Britain.

But then again, he may have come in for loads of stick in his native Germany, making him very, very angry. Why else would he build a car as unbelievably evil-looking as the Gumpert Apollo.

It looks like the automotive equivalent of Freddy Krueger – truly frightening on a grand scale – and goes like a cruise missile with a lightning bolt up its bottom.

A 4.7-litre engine with two turbochargers, four camshafts and five valves per cylinder develops a barely-believable 650bhp and more than 625lb/ft of pulling power.

The behemoth of a motor gets the car to 62mph in three seconds dead, to 124mph in 8.9 seconds and on to a top speed of 224mph – unusually free from top speed-sapping speed limiters.

That makes it the ninth fastest accelerating production car ever – sitting between the featherweight Ariel Atom and hardcore Ford RS200 rally car.

But a fast car is more than just a potent powerplant. The chassis is a constructed from alloy tubes with a carbon fibre shell adding strength and safety. Naturally, the bodywork is almost entirely carbon fibre.

This goes a long way to justifying its £215,000 starting price. Opt for the Sport version (pictured here) and you'll need to hand over another £60,000 – the price of a brand new BMW M5.

That's a lot of cash, even in 'standard' trim. But how many other cars look like a refugee from a particularly tough battle at Le Mans?

Open the Apollo's gullwing door, and you'll have to negotiate a huge sill before you drop down into the leather race seats. That's difficult to do without causing family-threatening injuries.

Make no mistake, this is a card-carrying supercar; not a posing pouch for premiership footballers or their immaculately coiffured WAGs.

But with a price tag only the richest petrolheads could dream of affording, the Apollo will – sadly – remain a rare sight on the roads.

L.A.T.W.O.T. Video of the Week

An Apollo being designed, built and having the wheelnuts thrashed off it.

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