For this year’s Frankfurt Motor Show, Volkswagen was bent on making a splash with the production version of its long-anticipated Up! city car. But at an expo packed with countless exciting supercars on display, a humble vehicle like the Up! could easily have been overshadowed. So VW didn’t just bring one car, it brought a dozen or so – and keeping them fresh was quite an accomplishment when you consider that the production version is only available (initially, at least) in one body style. But that’s about to change.
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We have to admit we were more than a little bit intrigued when Skoda showed up at Wörthersee this year with the Fabia RS 2000 roadster you see here. The concept essentially took the company’s S2000 rally machine, gave it a fresh coat of Kermit and chopped off the roof… with four seats and four doors still intact. But could such a vehicle ever be produced?
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Spy shots and see-through body treatments are all we have to go on when it comes to the upcoming Subaru BRZ. We’ve had enough of that, however, and it seems Subaru is finally ready to show us a bit more of what’s in store for the future sports coupe. According to Car and Driver, the Japanese automaker will unveil a concept version of the BRZ at the 2011 Los Angeles Auto Show, and it will be wearing real sheetmetal this time, albeit with a wrinkle – none of the showcar’s panels will be the same as the production car. Read More »
SsangYong has had a hard time of it of late, and its production vehicles tend to be more indifferent than inspired, but it can still rock a cool concept when it wishes. While the XIV-1 concept certainly isn’t the final word in madcap crossovers, to our eyes, it features a nice combination of lines and forms in two boxes.
The concept-car necessities of leather-lined clamshells for seats, intricate headlights derived from Korean masks and an “advanced user interface” make their appearances, certain to be bland-ified for production. But this design is the template for the rest of SsangYong’s coming lineup, so the wraparound glass, clean bodysides and wheels spread-eagled at the corners might have a fighting chance. Official press release details (which sadly lack any information on powertrain) are after the jump. Read More »
With the long-serving Defender not… well, long for this world, Land Rover is gearing up for its eventual replacement – targeted to launch in 2015 – and we just got our first glimpse of it on the show floor here in Frankfurt. Or glimpses, we should say, as JLR surprised us with the debut not only of the concept we were expecting, but a pair of them.
In one corner, the white-roofed silver DC100 three-door wagon we’d been shown (at least, in part) a couple of weeks ago. In the other, the DC100 Sport, an open-air version decked out in yellow-orange. Both preview the next generation of the iconic, go-anywhere truck of choice for expeditionary teams worldwide, and pack such innovations as an off-road terrain scanning device to detect potential obstacles and – get this – a sonar depth-sounder for fording through rivers. Plus, you know, a whole lot more style than the model it envisions succeeding.
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Small, lightweight, electric and seats just one. That pretty much sums up the new Volkswagen Nils concept which was introduced at the Frankfurt Motor Show today.
The sole occupant sits inside an ultra-light all-aluminum chassis with aluminum skin and polycarbonate door panels. According to the automaker, overall length is just 120 inches (for reference, the Smart Fortwo is just over 98 inches long) and the weight has been kept below 1,000 pounds. Motivation comes from a 33-horsepower electric motor that weighs just 42 pounds, pulling power from a 5.3 kWh lithium-ion battery pack. The range is about 40 miles and charging takes just two hours.
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Around this time last year, Jaguar unveiled the incredible C-X75 Concept at the Paris Motor Show. With four electric motors and two micro-gas turbines powering all four wheels, we knew the C-X75 had little chance of going to production – at least in concept form – let alone finding a place in our own garages. Read More »
