There are worse retirement plans than being handed a Spanish electric hypercar for the duration.
Luis Pérez-Sala, Formula 1 driver emeritus, Spanish Touring Car Champion, test driver, has been woven into the revived Hispano Suiza project since 2019. He has been there as Driver Ambassador and development driver, which means the Carmen, Carmen Boulogne, and Carmen Sagrera have had someone properly fast telling the engineers what the pretty machine is doing wrong.
Most brand ambassadors are decoration with a lanyard, Pérez-Sala is the real deal. A car with more than 1,100hp and 1,160Nm does not become civilised because someone put a copper accent around a window frame and muttered about heritage over lunch. It needs kilometres, heat, cold, track abuse, city crawling, battery torture, and a driver who can separate drama from defect.
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ABOVE: Luis Pérez-Sala with the Hispano Suiza Carmen, Carmen Sagrera, and the people who have to make them behave.
Pérez-Sala brings the right sort of baggage. He was born in Barcelona in 1959, and raced for Minardi in Formula 1 during 1988 and 1989. He also finished sixth at the 1989 British Grand Prix. He then went on to race in Formula 3000 and Spanish GTs, winning the Spanish Touring Car Championship in 1991 and 1993. After racing, he tested cars for El País, worked with the RACC Young Drivers programme, and later ran HRT in Formula 1. How can you not admire that proper old school history? The young drivers are fabulous, but Pérez-Sala is a role model not just a social media post.
In other words, he knows when a car is talking sense and when it is flapping about like a duchess in a wind tunnel.
Hispano Suiza has a lot to live up to, and although not all of it is mechanical, who could forget all that movie glam association. The cars were a favourite of Hollywood stars, moguls, and wealthy sportsmen in the 1920s. A 1923 Hispano-Suiza Victoria Town Car was bought by Hollywood director D.W. Griffith, and who could forget the “Miss Fisher” car. The luxurious red 1920s Hispano-Suiza featured in Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and is a car I deeply lusted after. Then of course there is Jay Leno’s astounding museum-quality collection. Jay owns a 1915 Hispano-Suiza that features an 18.5-litre aircraft engine, designed for the street. It is overkill no doubt, but boy what a machine, and it sounds like nothing else on the planet.
The original company was founded in Barcelona in 1904 by Damián Mateu, with Marc Birkigt supplying the engineering brilliance. Between 1904 and 1946, it built more than 12,000 luxury performance cars and 50,000 aircraft engines. That is proper old-money provenance, before everyone with a laser-cut badge and a leather sample book started claiming lineage.
The rejuvenated badge arrived in 2019 under Miguel Suqué Mateu, great-grandson of the founder, and the Carmen was the first electric hypercar to carry the name into the modern era. The Carmen Boulogne followed, then the Carmen Sagrera in 2024 for the brand’s 120th anniversary. The shape looks back to the Xenia Dubonnet, and that sounds like an aperitif served at Clarence House by the Queen Mother’s favourite flunky more than a concept car.
Pérez-Sala’s job has been to stop all that heritage gloss becoming white noise. Hispano Suiza says he has driven the cars in Andorra, Andalusia, Barcelona, Castellolí, Calafat, Ronda, Miami, Carmel, Madrid, and through Catalonia, which means ice, heat, circuits, streets, and rich-people event lawns all had a chance to expose weak spots. That sounds glamorous until you remember development driving is mostly repetition, notes, sweating, waiting, and saying the same uncomfortable thing to engineers until someone changes a setting.
The Sagrera, like the Carmen and Carmen Boulogne, is not trying to be a sensible car. Sensible cars are two-a-penny, most of them painted resale grey and driven with the emotional range of a dishwasher. A Hispano Suiza should be absurd, beautiful, expensive, and utterly intimidating. It should also be more than a carbon-fibre chaise longue on wheels.
Pérez-Sala earns his supper by talking about the car’s acceleration taking your breath away from a first-person perspective. That could sound a bit too soft brochure fog from anyone else. From a man who has driven Formula 1 cars, it has proper gravitas. The same goes for safety, comfort, battery validation, and ride quality. Those are not sexy words, but they decide whether a hypercar feels finished or merely costly.
Hispano Suiza has Pérez-Sala appear at events such as Goodwood Festival of Speed and on first drives with owners. If you have spent big bucks, you do not want a casual thanks and a flute of warm fizz. You want the man who helped tune the car to explain why it feels the way it does, preferably before you do something heroic and expensive.
There is a charming old-school warmth to the arrangement, with a Spanish marque carrying a century of aristocratic association, an electric hypercar with 1,100hp, and a former F1 driver quietly doing the unglamorous work behind the glamour. It is part engineering, part family legacy, and part polished diplomacy.
If the Sagrera has a soul, and one hopes it does at this money, Pérez-Sala has probably left fingerprints on it.
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Alan Zurvas is the founder and editor of Gay Car Boys, Australia's leading LGBTQI+ automotive publication. Before launching GCB in 2008, Alan's automotive writing was published in SameSame.com.au and the Star Observer. With over 16 years of hands-on car reviewing experience, Alan brings an honest, irreverent voice to every review — championing value and innovation over brand loyalty.
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