Every Indian car enthusiast knows the feeling: the world’s great roadsters all come from somewhere else. For a decade, a small Bengaluru design studio has been quietly working to change that — and by the end of 2026, its answer, the Hyperion-1, is scheduled to reach production. It is the car widely described as India’s first homegrown roadster, hand-built by a team of five or six people, and it has been a decade in the making.
Motormind Automotive Designs was founded in Bengaluru in 2008 by designer Shahid Haq, as an industrial design and prototyping studio that built its name on automotive styling kits, custom bodywork and concept design. The Hyperion-1 began as a three-year research and development project inside that studio, and when it was unveiled at the 2016 Delhi Auto Expo it stopped the show — an open-top, track-focused roadster with Formula 1 styling cues, built entirely by hand with home-grown resources and Haq’s personal savings.
The car wears its racing inspiration proudly. A split front end, huge side air intakes with cooling ducts, a tapering tail with aero-style spoilers and a rear diffuser give it the stance of a single-seater, while the cabin pairs leather bucket seats with a carbon-fibre console, ambient LED strips, hand-crafted gauges and a fully adjustable, 3D-printed steering wheel. Under the bodywork sits a V6 engine, in a machine the company built for the track as much as for the road.
The wait is nearly over. In October 2026 Motormind opened a new facility in Bengaluru — a design studio and showroom built as a community and experiential hub for enthusiasts, nearly five years in the making — and announced that the production version of the Hyperion-1 will launch by the end of the year. The new facility will be the home and showcase for the Hyperion-1 programme.
The same event showed how far the studio’s craft has come. Motormind also unveiled the Aventador One, a bespoke styling project built on a Lamborghini Aventador with a custom-designed and engineered carbon-fibre body kit, unveiled by chief guest Boopesh Reddy of Bren Corporation.
A decade after a handful of people in a Bengaluru garage set out to build India’s first roadster, the Hyperion-1 is about to become a production car — proof that world-class automotive design can be homegrown, hand-built and entirely Indian.
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