You might not immediately think of Austria as an automotive powerhouse. This mountainous European country is slightly smaller than Maine but packs a ton of punch for its humble size. Its three exports to the North American auto market slay their respective segments: KTM motorcycles, the Mercedes G Wagon, and Red Bull’s upcoming RB17 hypercar.

I know you have tons of questions: Isn’t the G Wagon from Mercedes in Germany? Red Bull makes cars? and even, What’s a KTM? I’ll answer them all, one vehicle at a time.

KTM was founded in Mattighofen, Austria in 1934. Over the decades it has cemented a reputation as a premiere off-road motorcycle brand. The company did this by building high performance off-road motorcycles to take home countless motorsports wins. In the 1990s it leveraged this reputation to expand into performance road motorcycles and now even makes an ultralight sports car, the track-oriented X-Bow.

The two other largest Austrian automotive companies were Puch (which built bicycles and then road cars) and Steyr which was first a rifle manufacturer and continued to be a defense contractor even while building automobiles. Their 1934 merger resulted in Steyr-Daimler-Puch. The conglomerate became famous for its Steyr line of off-road trucks, which were even used by the U.S. Army.

When Mercedes decided to take on Land Rover for off-road SUV supremacy, it partnered with Steyr-Daimler-Puch. The result was the G Wagon, which is still built at the “Magna Steyr” factory in Johann Puch’s hometown of Gratz, Austria. There was actually once a version badged as a “Puch” for certain markets.

Does it make sense why Arnold Schwarzenegger is Mercedes’ celebrity ambassador for the SUV’s latest generation now?

Alright, so Austrian engineering was instrumental in vehicles that are dominating the off-road motorcycle and SUV segments. But what is this Red Bull hypercar? That may be the most extreme example yet.

Since Ettore Bugatti rolled out the Type 35, European sports car companies have won on Sunday, sold on Monday. The recipe for success is dominating the Grand Prix circuit, then slamming the same engine in a “Grand Tourer” and charging more than anyone else. You could argue KTM used a similar strategy to sell off-road motorcycles. But when it comes to auto racing, Bugatti went out of business after WWII and Ferrari used this strategy to spend decades at the top.

Note that Ferrari is headquartered less than 200 miles from the Austrian border. There must be something in the water! It all went downhill for Ferrari when an Austrian energy drink company leapt into the ring.

Red Bull straight up bought the Honda racing team. It has been on the Formula 1 podium 277 times, won 120 races, and is dominating the championship. It first won in 2010 and continued this streak for four incredible years. For its latest streak, it won the driver’s championship in 2021, then both driver’s and constructors’ in 2022, and 2023. This year, Red Bull and Max Verstappen is obviously the team to beat, leaving Mercedes and Ferrari scrambling to keep up. I guess that’s what you can accomplish when you charge $4 for a can of soda.

What’s incredible is that the Red Bull/Honda team was doing all this winning and not capitalizing on it with any hypercar sales. The closest thing might be the Acura NSX built by Honda, but even that’s been cancelled. I’ve previously written how Red Bull hoards all the world’s coolest vehicles, including countless custom off-roaders and a MIG fighter jet. But it never made its own. Then Red Bull announced it’s building an ultra-limited run of hypercars featuring its F1 technology.

The Red Bull RB17 just made its debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The team enlisted Adrian Newey, Chief Technology Officer of Red Bull Racing. The name RB17 is actually inline with the F1 competition cars which are all RB and a number–but skipped number 17.

Unlike F1 competition cars, the RB17’s carbon fibre monocoque will be fully enclosed and have two seats. It has a mid-mounted 4.5-liter V10 which will rev to an F1-worthy 15,000 RPM. Its gearbox will incorporate a monstrous electric motor for hybrid drive. All-told it will make 1,200 horsepower. Red Bull advertises a top speed of 217 mph.

How much will this (slightly) more comfortable F1 car cost? A staggering $7.7 million. But with production limited to just 50, something tells me it will sell out. I’d say Austria just outdid Ferrari at its own game.

Some would argue that Austria’s most impressive automotive engineering expert wasn’t KTM off-road motorcycles, or the Red Bull RB17, or even the G Wagon–but Ferdinand Porsche. The engineer was born in Maffersdorff Austria (which is now part of the Czech Republic). He built the world’s first hybrid in 1900 before founding Porsche automobiles in Stuttgart, Germany in 1931 and engineering the first Volkswagen in 1934.