dual purpose tailights... interesting concept, that probably won't make it to production for a long time

at least two journalists said that the wastegates vent through the taillights, but we've also heard they'll be used to vent hot air from the engine compartment. The area to the right of the light appears to be open and looks a little vent-y. In the image above, we can see what appears to be some kind of light mesh sitting behind the open area in the light.

http://autoweek.com/article/car-news/ford-gts-mystery-taillights

Road Runner X-1 concept car, New York Auto Show 1969

The wheels were sitting on hydraulic dollys that came through a translucent stage.

In front of the car was a regulation NHRA Christmas Tree that would blink down to green and the display sound system blasted the sound of a big block Plymouth going down the quarter mile!

The hydraulics made the car squat on launch, then lurch on the up-shifts while lights under the floor strobed from front to rear with increasing speed! Then at the end of the 1/4 mile the nose would dive under braking and cool air brake flaps would pop open on the rear quarter panels.

Found on https://www.facebook.com/groups/505973489414476/
photos by Stanley Rosenthall

Stop Suzuki if you've heard this one before

 

There's something just a tad familiar about one of the new concept cars Suzuki is showing off at this month's Tokyo Motor Show.

The X-Lander, which uses a 1.3 litre hybrid engine mated to the four-wheel-drive system of the company's venerable Jimny off-roader (which, incidentally, we can't believe is still on sale after 15 years either!) is being described by the company as being "like a fusion of off-road power and mechanical precision".

However, its formula of two seats in a cockpit open to the elements, a small-to-non-existent boot and faintly Toytown-esque styling seem more than just a little bit reminiscent of a certain sales flop offered by the company back in the dark days of the mid Nineties.

X-90, anyone?

The Aston Martin CC100 shocks for all the right reasons

OUTRAGEOUS. Attention-grabbing. Extrovert. Not words, chances are, you’ll have been using to describe Aston Martin’s offerings of late.

The company makes some of the most graceful motoring offerings on the market today and – right from the entry-level V8 Vantage to the reinvented Vanquish – they’re not exactly lacking in thumping amounts of torque and exhaust notes so good they induce goosebumps either. They’re all things of beauty, but shocking or genuinely surprising they aren’t. Stylistically at least all of Aston’s current range harks back to the DB9 of 2004, which in turn borrowed more than a few of its good looks from 1994’s DB7. 

That’s why the company’s latest concept car, the open-top, two-seater CC100, is such a breath of fresh air. It’s inspired by the car that brought Aston one of its greatest motorsport moments – the DBR1, which won Le Mans in 1959 – and is loud, lairy and just a little bit yellow in all the right places. Everything a brand new DB9 isn’t, basically.

The thing that really excites me about the CC100, though, is that the last genuinely eyeball-grabbing Aston concept, the 1998 Project Vantage, sired the original Vanquish three years later.

Fingers crossed we get a CC100 for the road, then!

Citroën joins the off-roader party

Citroën's DS-branded line of luxury models is about to be joined by an off-roader, if this sveltly styled concept car is anything to go by.

I'm already a bit of a fan of the French firm's upmarket offerings - the rapid DS3 Racing in particular - but this latest offering, which will be officially unveiled at the Shanghai Motor Show, suggests the company is looking at grabbing a slice of the SUV cake too.

What the exact production version looks like, how much it costs and what'll it be like to drive remain as jobs for Citroën to sort out in the fullness of time, but there are one or two things I'm already sure of. Firstly, that - unlike the BMW X4 unveiled last week - it looks fabulous, although the company's claim it's got "a hynoptic stare" is just a tiny bit fatuous.

More importantly, it would be impossible for the company to make it worse than the last Citroën off-roader, the godawful C-Crosser.

Say bonjour, then, to the Citroën DS Wild Rubis...

BMW Z4 gets the Zagato treatment

YOU know when you see the evocative slashes of the Zagato badge on a car's flanks that you're in for a bit of a visual treat.

The Italian coachbuilder has in the past treated Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin and Bentley models among others to his distinctive lines and unusual swoops, and now the Milan company's been given a BMW Z4 to play with. The striking sports car you see here, which is going on show at this year's Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, is the result.

Andrea Zagato said: "Our success in finishing the car in such a short space of time shows what is possible when two successful companies pool their resources.

“BMW is a high-achieving carmaker boasting a vast well of knowledge and technical capability in this area. When you combine that with our expertise in the creation of micro-series cars and our streamlined production processes, everything is in place to produce a beautiful model like the BMW Zagato Roadster in double-quick time”.

Among the features you won't find on an ordinary Z4 are the rear lights hidden behind a sheet of smoked black glass, the trademark Zagato 'double bubble' metalwork on the bootlid, new air outlets among the car's flanks, and a - let's say distinctive - brown and creme interior.

Among the cars Zagato has previously got the pens out for are the Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato, the Alfa Romeo SZ, the Spyker C12 Zagato and the Ferrari 575 GTZ.

An MGB owner's view of the new MG Icon

THIS unusual offering is being hyped as the hottest new automotive offering at this week's Beijing Motorshow - but in terms of style it's straight from the Sixties.

The MG Icon might look like a sporty, small off-roader in the vein of say, Nissan's Juke but the concept car's British designer reckons it pays tribute to MG's sports cars of the Fifties and Sixties, particularly the MGB GT coupe which would have been a familiar sight on Britain's roads after its introduction in 1966.

Anthony Williams-Kenny, MG's chief designer, said: "The MG brand has a unique set of values and heritage and allows us to offer individual design values to our products. The MG Icon represents our vision of a modern MG and we feel that the small SUV canvas demonstrates MG’s capacity for progressive design with respect for its long heritage. "We have balanced familiar brand cues, such as the wide and powerful front end graphic interpretation and, as one would expect, with a strong focus on the unique MG octagon.

The MG Icon clearly demonstrates a progressive and soulful British spirit and has a lithe and powerful stance – its proportion harmonised by feature lines interpreted from MG’s iconic greats."

The car has already won an award for Best Concept from the Beijing show's organisers but as an owner of one of the original MG BGTs from the early Seventies I'm not so sure; details like the way the lights sit on top of the rear wings worked well on the crisp coupe, but on the Icon they look a little bloated and out of place, while the rest of the car seems dominated by the enormous rear wheelarches.

It's certainly challenging but it does at least doff its cap to the company's heritage, and is more obviously a descendant of MGs of old than the MG6 and the soon-to-arrive MG5 are.

Share your motoring stories with David Simister by sending an email to david.simister@champnews.com

Jaguar C-X16: The new E-Type?

I KNOW I'M not a fan of teaser shots and sketches, but I like this one.



This is all that Jaguar's prepared to reveal right now about the C-X16, a new sports car it's promising to unveil at next month's Frankfurt Motorshow, and already rumours are rife in Internetdom that it's either a) the first clue as to how the current XK's successor will shape up, or b) the "small sports car" owners Tata have been dropping hints about for ages.



Ian Callum, Director of Design at Jaguar Cars said:



"Great Jaguars have always been beautiful, innovative and have looked firmly to the future. The finished C-X16 concept has the potential to do these things while retaining the ability to surprise, to excite and invigorate."



For my money, it looks a little like the old Aston Martin DB7, but that's not a bad thing.



Is it a true E-Type successor? Watch this space...

Anything we can do, the Italians can do with more style

FASHION, food, fine art and prime ministerial sex scandals. Yup, the Italians do just about everything not only better, but more stylishly than we Brits can.

It's the same for cars, because they've had a hand in shaping more cars than you'd probably imagine. Ever owned an original Golf, a Peugeot 406 Coupe, a Lotus Esprit or a Daewoo Matiz and wondered why they're strangely good looking? It's because they've all been sculpted by the automotive artists of Italy, even though the manufacturers in most cases would rather you didn't know about it. All cars with a flair you can't get from any other country, and that's before I get onto the endless procession of Ferraris, Fiats and Alfas.

Take Turin-based Bertone, which last week launched a tantalisingly tempting glimpse of what the next Jaguar X-Type should look like. Anyone who read my article on the old E-Type last week will already know I like my Jags, but the stunning B99 concept car couldn't have been further from the Mondeo-in-drag X-Type if it tried. It's just a shame you'll never see one at your local dealer.

Some show cars, like the Audi TT, do make it from motorshow to motorway almost unchanged, but they're the exception rather than the rule. It's much more likely you'll get something like the Porsche Boxster, which looked a bit like an Art Deco spaceship when it was first shown off in 1993, but what we actually got three years later was completely watered down.

The B99, if anything, reminds me of the Series 3 XJ6 from the late Seventies, which is what happens when you give an already elegant executive saloon to the Italians to play with. It's like sticking James Bond in an Armani dinner jacket - English, obviously, but with a hint of delicate Italian flair.

It's just a shame I reckon Jaguar - a company with a long and proud history of not putting concept cars into production - probably won't make it. Pity really, because they've not really got an excuse not to.

We as as species have longed cracked the conumdrum of making cars work properly, which frees our talented engineers and designers up to stop so many of them looking so derivative. If we can get Italy, the most stylish nation on Earth, to help us out, then we should.

Life's too short to drive a boring car.

Volkswagen's black cab

EVER wondered what the iconic black cab would look like if a group of German engineers went about redesigning it?

That's the question Volkswagen have put to the public with its Taxi Concept Car, which it launched in London this week complete with a raft of what it calls “tongue-in-cheek” design touches.

Naturally, it's black and has a sign with the word TAXI written on it in large, luminous letters, but the rest of the details are either a) a tad fatuous or b) not really taxi-esque enough. The stylised Union Flag on the roof, for instance, would be fine as a sort of cheeky style statement atop a Mini Cooper, but unless you've somehow landed at Heathrow and made it to the exit without working out which country you're now in, I can't see it being much use on Volkswagen's reinvention of the cab.

What about, for instance, fitting a stereo that only plays MOR and Easy Listening? I have, for instance, only encountered these genres being played on sound systems in taxis, which in the happy haze of a drunken hour sound like a cross between an Enya cover of Fleetwood Mac's back catalogue and a blue whale giving birth. You can also never trace these mysterious radio stations the following morning.

Taxis, too, are usually equipped with a cheap, nasty faux leather you'd never see in any normal car; I know it's a cover designed to make it easy to clean a reveller's kebab/Smirnoff Ice vomit cocktail, but it's not a feature VW's mentioned on its taxi, which makes me think they haven't thought of it.

And don't forget the piece de resistance: the drivers themselves, who are more often than not lovely, intelligent people but on the very odd occasion seem to be opinionated chaps you'd be forgiven for assuming are practising for a BNP pre-entry oral exam. In the past friends and I have been forced into all sorts of conversations you thought had been left behind at Bernard Manning gigs, circa 1980.

Volkswagen misses out on these quintessentially British details, you see...

Swiss and cheesy

FORGET the Ferrari 458 Spider, the BMW 650i Convertible and even the new MINI Roadster. Next year's ultimate open top car will be made in Switzerland from bits of bamboo.

Chances are you're too busy scraping the ice off your windscreen to contemplate going anywhere near a convertible, but even in the middle of deepest winter a slightly bonkers concept car from a company based about 20 minutes' drive, from Zurich, is being hailed as one of next year's unlikely motorshow stars.

Switzerland as a nation has never really taken the car to its heart - motorsport, for instance, is banned altogether - and I've already reckoned Rinspeed, this new car's creator, is the result of all the latent enthusiasm left to boil over among the country's few petrolhead residents.

In previous years they've given us the Splash, the world's first and as far as I know only hydrofoil car, the Presto, which can stretch in size at the touch of a button, and the X-Trem, which is what a Mercedes M Class would look like if you asked a small child to redesign it as a yellow pickup truck with a hovercraft on the back. As a car company, they're ingenious and insane in equal measure.

So it's not at all surprising to discover the Rinspeed Bamboo has an interior lined with - you guessed it - bamboo - and an exterior painted in gold and topped off with some poles and a bit of black fabric. Apparently, it's meant to remind you of St Tropez at some point in the Seventies, with Brigitte Bardot behind the wheel with playboy Gunther Sachs at her side. That's the company's description, not mine!

It is, particularly from the viewpoint of a frosty British person, possibly about the most pointless vehicle I've ever seen, unless you're actually convinced you're a character from the Roger Moore era of James Bond films and have Boney M's greatest hits on standby. Even if Seventies fashion makes a comeback next spring you've still got remember what it is; a beach buggy lined with bamboo and crafted by lunatics in a shed in Switzerland.

I still want one though.