Portugal is not the first country you would think of when someone says European supercar. Italy, Germany, Britain, Sweden... the shortlist writes itself. Porto, where Adamastor is based, does not traditionally appear on it.
That changes now, and the Furia is making a credible case for its inclusion.
Adamastor was founded in 2010 and spent its early years in composite manufacturing and motorsport engineering before pivoting to road cars in 2018. Five years of development followed. What emerged is a genuine, testable, machine that has been proven in prototype testing that has recently completed an intensive round of track sessions at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve in Portimão without a single reliability issue. Test driver Diogo Matos has been putting Prototype 001 through its paces, and Autoblog reports the feedback has been consistently positive.
This is not a digital render with a press release attached. The Furia exists, it has been driven hard, and Adamastor is now moving toward production.
What it is built from
The Furia is a carbon fibre monocoque with a centrally mounted engine driving the rear wheels, and a layout designed from the ground up around aerodynamic performance. The body is entirely carbon fibre. The underbody uses two Venturi channels to generate a significant proportion of the downforce without relying heavily on wing elements above the body. Adamastor quotes over 1,000 kilograms of downforce at 155 miles per hour. The circuit focused version they have also developed pushes that figure to approximately 1,800 kilograms at the same speed.
Fully adjustable double wishbone suspension at both ends allows the car to be configured for either road or circuit use. The braking system is AP Racing with six piston aluminium calipers at the front and four piston units at the rear. ABS and traction control are fitted.
The gearbox is a Hewland sequential unit operated via paddle shifters on the steering wheel. Hewland is the same company whose gearboxes appear in a large proportion of serious single seater racing cars. Fitting it to a road car is an emphatic statement about what the Furia is designed to do.
Dry weight is approximately 1,100 kilograms. By comparison, a Porsche 911 GT3 RS weighs 1,450 kilograms. The Furia is 350 kilograms lighter than that.
The engine
The power unit is the 3.5 litre twin turbo V6 developed by Ford Performance for the Ford GT. It produces more than 650 horsepower and 421 pound feet of torque available from low in the rev range. This is not a modified road car engine with a new exhaust note. It is the same bespoke racing unit that powered the Ford GT to its Le Mans class victory in 2016 in a car that beat Ferrari at the most famous endurance race in the world.
The claimed figures are 0 to 62 miles per hour in around 3.5 seconds and a top speed exceeding 186 miles per hour in the road legal configuration. Top Gear described those as respectable but not groundbreaking by modern standards. What the numbers do not fully capture is the significance of 650 horsepower in a car weighing 1,100 kilograms: that is a power to weight ratio of 590 horsepower per tonne, comparable to the McLaren Senna and significantly above the Porsche GT3 RS.
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The price and the ambition
Sixty examples will be built. Each costs €1.6 million before Portuguese VAT at 23 percent, which takes the figure to just under €2 million. In US dollars at current exchange rates, that is approximately $2.3 million. In context: an Aston Martin Valkyrie starts at around $3 million. A Pagani Utopia opens at $2.6 million. A Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut was listed at $3 million before production sold out. The Furia is expensive by any standard except the one it has chosen to compete in.
The company name comes from Adamastor, the sea monster in Luis de Camões' epic poem Os Lusíadas, the defining work of Portuguese literature, written to celebrate Vasco da Gama's voyage around the Cape of Good Hope. The car's name, Furia, means rage. The naming decisions are deliberate: this is a project built around Portuguese identity in a way that few startup supercar companies attempt.
Adamastor has stated its broader ambition publicly. The Furia platform is intended as the foundation for a racing programme aimed at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The engine that powers the road car already has a Le Mans class win on its record. The aerodynamics were developed to generate circuit level downforce. The gearbox is a racing unit. The path to Le Mans is not a marketing fantasy built on a road car that happens to look sporty. It is a logical engineering progression from what Adamastor has already built.
The honest question
Every startup supercar company carries the same risk. Koenigsegg made it. Pagani made it. Czinger is making it. For every one that reaches production, a dozen announce ambitions and disappear. The question for Adamastor is whether 60 buyers at €1.6 million each will materialise for a brand nobody has heard of.
The answer depends partly on the car and partly on the people. The car is evidently real, technically credible, and impressive in its specifics. Adamastor has been working with carbon composites since 2014, which means the manufacturing expertise exists. Prototype 001 has completed serious circuit testing without breaking. The Le Mans aspiration gives the project a narrative that pure road car startups often lack.
The honest question the Carscoops review posed still stands: is €1.6 million a rational price for a first car from an unknown Portuguese brand? The answer depends entirely on whether you are buying performance per euro or buying rarity, story and national pride alongside it. Sixty people in the world will decide Adamastor's answer to that question.
Sources:
- Motor1 — This New Supercar Packs A Powerful Ford Engine
- Autoblog — Adamastor Furia Hypercar Moves Closer to Production as 60 Units Planned
- Carscoops — Portugal's Furia Borrows The Valkyrie's Look And Detroit's V6 For $1.9M
- Top Gear — Portugal's first supercar is the Ford V6-engined Adamastor Furia
- The Supercar Blog — Adamastor Furia: This Portuguese supercar is quietly getting very serious
- The News Wheel — Adamastor Unveils a 650-HP Machine Powered by a Ford GT Engine