Putting a Range Rover engine on a Renault Twingo isn’t exactly an everyday occurrence, yet custom tuners Lazareth decided to have some fun and do just that.
While you’ll never mistake the French compact car for a luxury SUV, it does make for some awesome thrills to have the miniscule front-mounted engine the Twingo used to come in for a more powerful variety. As a result, the Twingo has been updated with a 3.5-liter V8 180 horsepower mid-mounted engine that conveys its power to the Twingo’s rear wheels through a five-speed manual transmission.
It took a lot of work, especially since a Twingo doesn’t exactly fall in the same line as that of a Range Rover. To fit the luxury SUVs engine on the hatchback, Lazareth modified the Twingo’s chassis by adding a rear tubular subframe, brand new suspensions, modified brakes, to name a few.
The result, as you can expect, is a hatchback that packs more power than Twingo could have ever had with a standard configuration. If the upgraded engine wasn’t enough, Lazareth also gave the Twingo’s interior a plush racing upgrade with MOMO bucket seats, a sports steering wheel, and new digital gauges.
With a new engine and an overall upgraded look, the Lazareth-tuned Twingo, which they’ve come to call as the Twingo Trophy V8, sells for around €70,000, or in the language of US dollars, around $105,000.
After what seemed like ages, Japanese car maker Mitsuoka is finally releasing its next-generation Viewt. Now, if you’re wondering who or what Mitsuoka is, they’re a local car brand from Japan that caters only to the Japanese market. What’s unique about Mitsuoka is the fact that they build modern cars that resemble those old-time British automobiles from the 50s and the 60s.
As you can plainly see with the new Viewt, Mitsuoka is continuing on that legacy. Underneath the vintage-looking exterior is actually a production-made Nissan Micra so you can be sure that while the look is vintage, the performance is not. Mitsuoka did alter a few of the design elements of the car like the integration of the front bumpers to the front end panels.
It’s been a while since we last saw Mitsuoka grace our presence with a car so the release of the new Viewt came at just the right time.
It would seem that the marketing team at Volkswagen watched Back to the Future one too many times before coming up with the idea for their latest commercial for the Volkswagen Polo. Just like in the Michael J. Fox series of films, a group of rough and tough leather wearing hot shots come into a diner ready to start some trouble with a Marty McFly type character. The in diner antics lead to a drag race where our protagonist’s Polo is set to take on a lead sled from the fifties. Only when the flag girl waves the start of the straight line competition, the Volkswagen driver merely inches forward to claim a greater prize.
Citroen sure knows how to take advantage of the latest in video technology. In a bid to promote their latest hatchback the DS3, the French manufacturer has resorted to a video-game style feature that allows you to take control of a DS3 from a piece of printed out interactive pages that you have in your hands.
All you need to do is go to Citroen’s website, print out the pages, and hold them in front of your webcam. What follows is a unique interactive program that allows you to muss over the DS3 and place it in different situations, including one where you can take it out for a nice drive with the piece of paper you’re holding as your very own steering wheel.
It’s a fun way to get acquainted with Citroen’s latest hatchback. The quick tutorial at the company’s website is easy enough to get you up to speed with what you need to do to give this a shot.
The Japanese automaker Mazda has commenced production on their compact hatchback the Mazda2 at their AutoAlliance factory in Thailand. Although the diminutive city car may not seem so impressive, you have to remember that it did win a few car of the year awards in its previous form and that the new car comes with an all new enticing feature, an even wider grin. The new Mazda2’s smiley face is not only more inviting than the generation that came before but it also gives the 2010 model year small city car a fun face that adds to the Japanese automaker’s Zoom-Zoom spirit of car building.
Just like the new MX-5, the Mazda2 has undergone a design refreshening and features a new front bumper that incorporates a set of larger larger vertical air intakes as well as the new happy face five point lower grill that is going into all of Mazda’s fun to drive vehicles. A new Mazda2 also gives hope that a new open air roadster inspired version could be in the works, especially after consumers have adjusted to the new car’s playful front end. As for now, these images are pretty much all we have to go on, but we promise to get back to you with more details as they become available.
While the current economic crisis has resulted in a few interesting partnership with a number of unlikely automobile manufacturers and other manufacturers weary of risky high priced ventures, the man from Prodrive feels that his super car company can sell premium compact city car for the not so unheard of asking price of $32,000; after all it is an Aston Martin. As part of the English coach builder’s plans to unroll a few new vehicles in order to recuperate some profits the powers at be behind Toyota and Aston Martin have joined forces to create a fashionable compact city car for the crowded narrow streets of densely populated European urban environments. What they ended up with is the upscale Aston Martin Cygnet based on the economical Toyota i.Q.
The venture actually sounds like another English sport/luxury hybrid when Mini commissioned the design team at Rolls Royce to produce a series of extremely extravagant small cars. The car’s foundation will be built at Toyota’s factory in Japan and then shipped to the Aston Martin factory in Gaydon where the team of hand built super car interiors will have a go at restyling the lowly Toyota’s interior bringing it up to super car status. Obviously the Cygnet should also wear some unique body work like an Aston Martin style twin vented hood, some flared arches and plenty of winged emblems.
This is a very bold move for the English automaker, attempting to sell a car smaller than a Smart for a little over $30,000. The German luxury automaker Audi has recently admitted to having a hard time justifying a premium hatchback for the U.S. market, dooming whatever chances we might have had for an RS3 stateside. The Vantage should be happy because it can now pass on the title of being the baby Aston; if they can keep production limited and watch the demand skyrocket, they should have no problem selling out of their Cygnet inventory. After all, who would pass up on the chance to buy a brand new Aston Martin for the price of a Nissan Maxima.
Over on the other side of the pond, the UK is getting set to unveil their all-new bad guy-chasing police cruiser, but unlike the new 2011 Chevrolet Caprice, which will be used in the US, the chaps from the UK have decided to crack down on their own criminals with the new Mitsubishi all-electric i-MiEV.
It seems odd to us that the UK police’s vehicle-of-choice in apprehending the baddies is an electric car is neither fast nor intimidating. But as it turns out, the compact electric car was displayed in full police regalia at the National Police Show last month. Since then, the i-MiEV, which runs on an electric motor and has a top speed of 130 km/h, has become somewhat of a hot item among police units in the country, a lot of them even resorting to asking Mitsubishi for some trial cars.
From our end, we have no idea how the i-MiEV can hold its own in against, say, a runaway Aston Martin, but then again, the UK Police Force must have something up their sleeves as far as tinkering with the i-MiEV is concerned.
We just can’t picture the electric car to exude the kind of menacing badass-ness police cruisers are known to have.
Taking a page out of a design that was made over four decades ago, Honda has released the first look at the retro-looking EV-N Concept. If you think you’ve seen that front design before, you probably have; it looks like the N360 micro car.
A small four-seat, electric car, Honda created the EV-N with an attempt to bridge old-school flavour with new-school technology. The car, which is set o be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in a few weeks, comes with a solar panel roof, door-mounted U3-X personal mobility devices, and the all-new car-communication technology, the Honda Electric Mobility Loop (HELLO) -
it’s a technology that allows Honda’s outfitted with it the chance to ‘communicate’ with each other, hence the name HELLO.
That’s as much as we know about the EV-N for now. We’ll keep you posted on anything new that comes up leading up to Tokyo where the car will be introduced along with the CR-Z concept and the Skydeck concept.
The design house Pininfarina is responsible for some of the most beautiful four wheeled creations throughout the history of the automobile; however the Italian design studio has also been an innovative force, constantly adapting to the needs of the day in order to ensure the continuation of personal transportation. One thing that any Italian based manufacturing facility is known for is an outright sense of style and the ability to instill beauty into everything they do. That is why Pininfarina has just unveiled their latest concept, the Nido, an attractive, small and safe vehicle geared at replacing densely populated urban environments with a low emissions vehicle that was designed from day one to not only look good but provide peace of mind to the occupants inside.
In Italian, the word Nido means nest, however we see the compact city car concept as what is usually being safeguarded in a nest, eggs. Some of the design sketches show the early concept as being a round egg shaped vehicle with the passengers occupying a yellowish yolk like protected space in the middle. So the Nido is a 21st century attempt to solve the age-old high school science project, how to keep the insides intact upon impact. Pininfarina’s engineers have designed the Nido with a separate passenger compartment built inside the concept’s frame and body that is connected to the outer shell with energy absorbing cushions placed around the passenger’s compartment. The bright orange polymer cushions would act like springs upon impact, absorbing the forces exerted by the instant deceleration, however unlike energy storing metal coils that would spring back returning all that pressure onto the passengers, a cushion simply acts like an oversized pillow in a briefcase.
Pininfarina knows that no matter how great a car is, it has no chance at being remembered if it is unattractive. So that is why the designers worked with the safety focused engineers from the beginning to create the Nido city car concept. The Nido follows the traditional rules of automobile styling rules with four wheels, two headlights and a large grill in the middle of the front bumper that almost looks back at you. One place where the Nido concept brakes from ordinary cars is the lack of a hood; this begs the question, what is going to power the compact city car and which wheels will be driven? The most likely answer is that similarly to the Smart and Nano, the power plant will be placed behind the two passengers, however the Pininfarina Nido’s lightweight construction would make it an ideal candidate to be a battery electric vehicle.
The great American automaker, Ford, is invading their competitor’s markets by introducing the new Figo into the Indian market. The compact Figo is an all new car that features a fresh, contemporary shape that offers a distinct alternative to the traditional offerings in the city car segment with a shape that exudes the spirit of energy in motion with its bold fender flares and swept back headlamps.
Like all of the blue oval’s new car, the Ford Figo was designed with their consumers in mind. The all new body features lots of fresh fun elements like a large mouth front bumper, sporty alloy wheels pushed to car’s four corners, squared off rear end and subtle rear spoiler. Despite its compact size, the Ford Figo has a spacious interior with plenty of room for both passengers and cargo thanks to its taller roofline and more upright stance. Ford feels that this is the perfect car to combat the ultra affordable Tata Nano that is produced in the developing nation. The Figo’s size makes it the perfect car to navigate the narrow stretches of the Indian bazaars and markets without scarifying an ounce of style.
With Ford planning on bringing the equally compact Fiesta to the U.S. in the near future, the question that remains is whether or not Americans will have a soft spot in their hearts for a more spacious city car offering.
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