What started with a ‘high-school’ sketch has now turned into Qatar’s first-ever concept sports car. The Elibriea was unveiled at the 2016 Qatar Motor Show. The brainchild of Abdul Wahab Ziaullah, the physical development of the concept car took around 2 ½ years.

There were lots of oohs and aahs at the Doha Convention & Exhibition Centre when the covers were taken off the Elibriea and Ziaullah is extremely proud of having achieved his dream. “When we were taking it out for testing, there would be many people desperate to take a closer look. The Qatari Batmobile is what they called it. And I liked that. It’s unique,” said Ziaullah yesterday.

The process started when Ziaullah submitted a proposal to the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) and he received funding for developing the design. And then over the past 2 ½ years, the car was manufactured with funding from the Ali Bin Ali Group. The name, Ziaullah explains, came to him when he started combining words like elegance, luxury and others. “A lot of permutations came into my mind with these words and I finally came up with Elibriea. It sounded luxurious. And more importantly, it’s simple,” he said .

And just like the name, the car itself is different sets of parts put together. “It’s just like making a dish. In Qatar, all the ingredients are imported. Then you put them together and create your own recipe. That’s what we did too. We took resources from different industries and then snapped them together into a product.”

The Elibriea has a 525HP engine procured from General Motors. There was an engine made but they went with the GM engine for safety reasons. The concept car has a mid-engine architecture which was chosen by Ziaullah because it makes the vehicle more stable and improves the handling. As for the performance figures, the car hasn’t been pushed fully yet but Ziaullah says that the acceleration, during limited testing at the Al Khor airstrip, was more than anticipated. And he reluctantly reveals that the 0-100kmph figure was ‘3 point something’.

Ziaullah is not satisfied with the “great tag of Qatar’s first-ever concept car’. The next step for him is the commercialisation of the Elibriea. For that he’s already communicating with experts and looking to get more hands on deck. He says it will take 2-3 years for the first commercial variant of the Elibriea to be launched.

He wants it to be a unique product from Qatar. “Right now the unique product from Qatar is basically oil and gas. But it’s not a mechanical product. But once this thing develops to the next level it will be something that Qatar will be known for. Sweden is known for the Koenigsegg, Italy for Ferraris and Lamborghinis. That’s what the aim is. Qatar will be known for the Elibriea,” signed off Ziaullah.