Never Heard of This $500,000 American Luxury Sedan? You Won't Forget Its Looks

Motor Trend

9 hours ago

One of the most compelling reasons to buy a Rolls-Royce or a Bentley—besides telegraphing to everyone that you're loaded—is that you can get your car as a bespoke build, with your choice of colors, veneers, patterns and pinstripes. It's the rolling equivalent of a Saville Row suit. But you can get some pretty good custom threads in New York, and if New York–based Dacora Motors succeeds, the same will be true for ultra-luxury cars. Dacora's $500,000 hand-built, art-deco electric luxury sedan goes one step further than the Brits, because the personalization continues after purchase.
The 2028 Dacora EV is a $500,000 bespoke electric sedan with Art Deco design, customizable interiors, and post-purchase personalization. Founded by MIT engineers, Dacora plans limited initial production with potential expansion by the mid-2030s.
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Not that the Dacora prototype will have any trouble standing out even without customization. The sedan, said to be designed in conjunction with Pininfarina, is an ode to Streamline Moderne, looking rather like the result of a torrid tryst between a Chrysler Airflow and a classic Chris-Craft wooden speedboat. The Dacora is draped in details that duel for your eyes' devotion, from the metal-straked wood hood to the 'Darrin dip' at the back doors. Somehow, all these competing elements unite to form a cohesive whole. We think it's handsome and tasteful for what it is, though we're a bit worried that people said the same thing about the Stutz Blackhawk back in the 1970s.
Inside, the Dacora features a broad wood dash, two-tone leather, and a simple cluster of analog-style gauges behind the wood-rim steering wheel. Yes, there's a screen at the center—and one in front of the passenger as well—but the graphics appear from behind the wood veneer. Turn them off, and wood is all you see. What you won't see is plastic; everything in the interior, Dacora says, is made of wood, wool or leather, with no polymers to be found. A New Level of Bespoke Building
Dacora Motors plans to take the idea of a bespoke build to another level, starting with the seating arrangement. A selection of buckets and benches allow the Dacora sedan to be configured to seat between 3 and 6 people, while a unique adjustable floor allows fine-tuning of the driving position. The modular center console has a dozen different configurations, including The Larder (a snack fridge), The Executive (folding desk with pen, notepad and phone holder), The Barista (espresso machine), The Botanist (a live bonsai tree under a glass dome), The Humidor (you know cigars cause mouth cancer, right?), and The Virtuoso (removable record player).
Interior colors and wood trims are customizable, as you'd expect, but Dacara goes one step further: Buyers can supply their own wood. Feeling guilty about tearing down Grandpa's fishing shack to build your eight-bedroom piazza? No worry, you can turn his weekend getaway into a car! Optional extras will include ambient scenting and halotherapy, a wellness pursuit that involves breathing air with salt particles.
All of this is merely customization at the build phase. The Dacora's seats will be built with a system that allows for easy reupholstering, and Dacora plans to produce two new limited-edition material collections each year, allowing near-constant updates. Just as you swap out your wardrobe winter to summer, you can do the same with the interior of your Dacora.
If the car is starting to sound like an engineer's fantasy—adjustable floor, updateable seats, screens behind wood—you're correct. Dacora was founded by two MIT-trained engineers, Kristie and Eric D'Amrbosio-Correll, and their plan is to have the cars hand-built in Hudson, New York, about 120 miles north of New York City. The facility, called Dacora Garage, will be a combination factory and club for Dacora buyers and owners. Ultium Underneath?
Surprisingly, the engineering couple is not going to engineer the powertrain; rather they're going to source it from an American automaker, and while they aren't saying which one, GM's Ultium platform is our best guess. Dacora Motors didn't have any firm tech specs to announce, but the company is promising at least 800 horsepower, a 4-second 0-60 time, and 400 miles of range, plus a gas-electric hybrid powertrain for those who aren't ready to go all-electric.
Dacora is taking refundable 10 percent deposits—for those of you rich enough to delegate math to underlings, that's $50,000—and claims to already have more than 75 reservations. The company's plan is a first-year run of 50 cars to be delivered late in 2028, 100 cars in 2029, and an eventual ramp-up to 5,000 cars per year by the mid-2030s.
It's an ambitious plan, and we've seen plenty of great vehicular ideas that never make it past the prototype stage, but we think Dacora Motors is on to something; after all, if the British can do convincing half-million-dollar cars, why can't the country that produced Deusenberg, Pierce-Arrow and Cord do the same? We'll keep fingers crossed and a close eye on this upstart American luxury brand, but we can't help but wonder if the reaction the company gets would be different if it had gone with a more... modern design?