Car of the week: Isdera Commendatore 112i

Have you heard of the German supercar company Isdera from the 80s? No? Didn’t think so, therefore let me introduce you to the one and only Isdera Commendatore 112i.

This car was a tribute to the famous Enzo Ferrari, even being named after his nickname Il Commendatore, translating to the knight commander from Italian. Even with the car being made in honour of Mr Ferrari it doesn’t actually look like one. Its style is largely inspired by the older generation of Group C endurance race cars, which is very evident with its aero package.

But it does take influence from a few cars outside of Group C endurance racing. And it’s very very German.

Its pop-up headlights are taken directly from the Porsche 968, and it’s very obvious, you can recognise those lifeless frog eyes anywhere. The suspension on the other hand has been ripped out of a Porsche 928 and if that wasn’t German enough for you, don’t worry, the engine 400bhp 6.0 V12 has been stripped from a Mercedes S600.

Now that we have addressed how the car is more German than the Royal Family, not an easy task, we can address what really went wrong with it. And honestly, there wasn’t much.

For its time, it stood as an amazingly impressive feat of engineering and was what most automotive manufactures for the time should have been striving for. It was kitted out with gull wing doors and engine covers, active suspension and an automatic air brake, it even had a periscopic rear-view mirror, it was only one step away from being a submarine.

But all of this futuristic tech for the time wasn’t cheap, to such an extent that it cost Isdera a total of €4 million to make one car, and alongside a slowing economy, it was inevitable that the company were going to go bankrupt, killing the project.

But this car was always a ‘what if’. Eberhard Schultz wanted to enter it into the Le Mans racing series, which was the defining reason for its elongated styling, but again, it unfortunately never materialised.

Top speed	213 mph
0-60	4.6 seconds
How many units were sold	1
Cost when new	£355,000 (intended to cost)
Dreams crushed	1

Isdera Commendatore 112i

Now Isdera went bankrupt in 1993, with a Swiss company buying the German-registered firm in 1999 who managed the organisation up until 2025. During this time, a Chinese company bought the brand in its entirety in 2021, with the company being acquired by the Xinghui Automotive team.

Unfortunately the German-registered company had to file for bankruptcy again as of April 2025.

But this really is the car that refuses to give up, as the Chinese investors who bought the brand relaunched the Isdera Automotive programme as a Chinese organisation in June 2025 alongside speculations of the Commendatore 112i’s successor, the L’Aquila.
The Isdera Commendatore 112i is therefore our car of the week as hopes are re-lit for one of Isdera’s cars to hopefully make its way to our roads soon.

“Isdera Commendatore 112i, front right (Saratoga)” by Mr.choppers is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.