The Apollo IE “Carbon Dragon”, N°5/10, is for sale in Greenwich

Chassis five, and what the VIN says

The car carries VIN W091E2177LAA71005 and is registered as a 2020 model. The last two digits of that number are the build number, and Carscoops confirmed it independently when the car first appeared: this is number five of the ten. It shows 1,600 miles.

It is offered by Miller Motorcars of Greenwich, Connecticut, under stock number 9409C, listed at $3,500,000 and also advertised as price on request depending on where you find it. Miller is the dealer at 342 West Putnam Avenue that also trades as Ferrari of Greenwich.

One thing to know before searching for it: this car circulates under two names. Miller calls it the Carbon Dragon. duPont REGISTRY published it as the Black Dragon, describing the same exposed gloss carbon finish and the same matte red badges. Every one of the ten was given a Dragon name by its first owner, and at least two of those names have been attached to this one car.

A German car designed in Turin and assembled by HWA

The Intensa Emozione is German by descent and almost nothing else. The company is what became of Gumpert of Altenburg, bought in 2014 by Ideal Team Venture, a Hong Kong investor consortium led by Norman Choi. Ownership moved again in 2020 to Apollo Future Mobility Group, a Hong Kong listed company that had previously sold jewellery and watches under the name WE Solutions.

The shape is the work of chief designer Jowyn Wong, in collaboration with Manifattura Automobili Torino. Wong has said he studied apex predators, marine life and insects, and the result reads as aviation and science fiction as much as motorsport. He went on to draw the De Tomaso P72 and then left to found his own studio. Intensa Emozione is simply Italian for intense emotion.

The build is split across two German specialists. The carbon monocoque comes from the Capricorn Group. Chassis setup and final assembly are done by HWA AG in Affalterbach, the firm of Hans Werner Aufrecht, the H and the A of AMG, in the workshops where HWA builds its racing cars. A car conceived in Hong Kong, drawn in Turin and screwed together next door to Mercedes-AMG is an unusual passport for anything.

Exposed carbon, red leather, and an exhaust of its own

The body is left in gloss exposed carbon with no paint over it, with matte red badges as the only contrast. Carscoops described the finish as taken from the original IE show car of 2017, the one Apollo used to introduce the model, so this is the launch car’s appearance ordered by a customer rather than an invention of its own. The cabin is red leather with carbon fibre, which on a car whose entire engineering argument is mass reduction is a deliberately unascetic choice.

Underneath it is the standard Intensa Emozione: a 6.3-litre naturally aspirated V12 derived from the Ferrari F140, 780 PS (769 hp) at 8,500 rpm, 760 Nm at 6,000 rpm, a 9,000 rpm redline, and a six-speed Hewland sequential driving the rear wheels. Kerb weight is 1,250 kg and maximum downforce is 1,350 kg.

The car has a bespoke exhaust system, and it has been driven. It ran at Lime Rock Park in July 2021, which for a hypercar of this rarity is worth more than it costs: 1,600 miles on a car that has turned laps is a better history than 200 miles on a car that has only ever been trailered.

Why all ten are called Dragons

Every Intensa Emozione carries a Dragon name, given by its first owner rather than by the factory. The ones on the public record are the Orange Dragon, the Ocean Dragon, the Red Dragon, the Blue Dragon, the Purple Dragon, the Samurai Dragon, the White Pearl Dragon, and this one, the Carbon Dragon. On a run of ten cars the name is the registration: nobody in this trade says chassis 005.

That is also why the names are unreliable. duPont REGISTRY published this same car as the Black Dragon, describing the identical exposed gloss carbon and matte red badges. Two names, one chassis, and no registry with the authority to settle it, because the naming was never Apollo’s to control in the first place.

The colours behind the names are worth knowing when a car surfaces. The Ocean Dragon was black carbon with blue flakes through it, red accents and a blue and tan Alcantara cabin. The Japanese car, the only IE in the country, is described by its dealer as Samurai Blue tinted carbon with light-reflecting particles and white and yellow accents. None of the ten is painted in the ordinary sense.

The four American cars

Of the ten built, four were imported into the United States, and three of them can be placed. Chassis 002, the Orange Dragon, was the first Intensa Emozione delivered to a customer and now sits in the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, credited to Barry Skolnick through IKONIC MOTORS. Chassis 004, the Ocean Dragon, went to a Connecticut owner in June 2023. Chassis 005 is this car.

The Ocean Dragon is the one that matters commercially. It was delivered new in June 2023, shown at Concorso Ferrari in Farmington, Connecticut that month and at Monterey Car Week later the same year, and it had covered 340 miles. A Connecticut delivery and a Connecticut debut, for a car of which there are four in the country, points fairly plainly at the same corner of the trade this one is being sold from.

Then it stopped being a car story. In May 2025 it was seized by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, and how it got there is worth setting out properly.

How chassis 004 ended up in a police impound

Start with a correction to the way this has been reported. The two businesses at the centre of the case were Twisted Twins Motorsports LLC and Lusso Auto Spa, and an auto spa is not a dealership. It is a detailing shop. They did not sell cars, they washed them, and that matters because the business was the shop window rather than the trade.

One disclosure, since the name will jump off the page here: Lusso Auto Spa has no connection with LUSSO or with lus.so. Lusso is simply the Italian word for luxury, and it is painted on a great many businesses in this trade.

According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the two companies were used to solicit investors. Expensive cars were parked outside the premises to draw people in. The targets were wealthy but not especially well informed, and reporting on the case says they included players from the Vegas Golden Knights, the city’s NHL team. Investors were invited to fund the purchase of exotic cars and boats that would then be resold to wealthy buyers overseas, in Singapore.

The numbers put to them were the tell. A Rolls-Royce Spectre bought for $526,000 was to be resold for $7.5 million. A boat bought for $3.9 million was to bring $13.5 million. Detectives concluded the overseas buyers did not exist at all, and that the money went on personal spending rather than on any resale.

Jong Rhee, 45, and Neelufar Rhee, 34, were arrested on 22 May 2025. They face 75 felony counts, although published accounts differ and some report 78, including racketeering, money laundering, forgery and theft, for losses police put at more than $57 million. Nothing has been proven in court. The couple also backed a Henderson restaurant, 8 Kitchen, since closed.

Seized alongside the Apollo were several Bugatti Chirons, a Pagani Huayra and a custom 2,500 horsepower MTI powerboat. Local reporting adds a detail that says as much as the balance sheet: shortly before the arrests, the couple are said to have entered their last $10,000 into a poker tournament.

The only public price the model has ever set

The seized Ocean Dragon went to Bonhams at The Quail on 15 August 2025 as lot 189P, estimated at $2,500,000 to $3,500,000. It sold for $3,442,500 including premium. That was the first Apollo Intensa Emozione ever offered publicly at auction, and it stands as the model’s world auction record because it is the only one.

It is worth being precise about what sold. The catalogue states that shortly after the previous acquisition the interior was removed, save for the dash, along with part of the fuel system, and the project was paused. The car crossed the block as an incomplete vehicle with 340 miles and a seat bucket in the boot, offered as an opportunity for the new owner to specify a cabin of their own.

So the single public data point for a ten-car model is a stripped example sold out of a police seizure. That is not a clean comparable, and anyone quoting $3.44 million as the value of an Intensa Emozione should say which car they mean.

What $3,500,000 is being asked against

The list price when new was $2,670,000 in the United States and €2,300,000 in Europe, both before options, quoted at the 2017 announcement. Cars in this class were ordered rather than configured, so most delivered above that.

Set the asking price against the only result there is. Miller wants $3,500,000 for a complete car with its interior intact, 1,600 miles and a track outing in its history. Bonhams got $3,442,500 for a car with 340 miles, no interior and part of its fuel system in boxes. The gap between the two is $57,500, which is roughly nothing at this level, and the complete car is on the right side of it.

The honest counterweight is liquidity. Ten cars means there is no market in the ordinary sense, only occasions. The auction result proves what one bidder would pay on one Friday in Monterey for an unfinished car with an unusually public backstory, and it may prove very little about the next one. A model this small does not have a price so much as it has precedents, and it now has exactly one.