Category: New Rides
We don’t usually expect news out of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to wake us up a bit. But this…
This has promise.
General Motors has filed a trademark application for the word “Stingray,” used as the name of a car. We know the Corvette’s 60th anniversary is coming up soon. We know the current, seventh-generation ‘Vette, brilliant as it is, has been with us a little too long.
Could the eighth generation be a revival of the classic split-window Stingray?
Cross your fingers. Jalopnik is reporting that Corvette PR rep Dave Caldwell is denying any intent to build a new Stingray. But GM apparently wants to reserve the right. That can’t be a bad thing. (Oh, and don’t get too excited by the photo. That’s a concept from a few years back. Still, we can dream…)
This is, perhaps, the most pointless car ever designed. It is a car from one of the most respected sports car manufacturers in the world…that might do zero-to-sixty in four tries, if you gave it a push and a little bit of a downhill course. It’s a car from one of the world’s most respected engine builders….with a 1.3-liter four-cylinder engine.
It is an Aston Martin…built by Toyota.
Whatever. We’re apparently getting it here.
The Aston Martin Cygnet, designed as a runabout for Aston owners who don’t want to take their Vantage to 7-11 for a case of beer, is coming to the United States. That’s the word from the respected industry rag Automotive News.
The Cygnet is built off the tiny Toyota iQ platform, a competitor for the Smart Fortwo overseas. It seats two, makes 100 horsepower under ideal conditions, and yes, has an interior hand-constructed from the finest materials by Aston Martin designers. It also wears that aggressive Aston grille…on it’s tiny, punched-pug face.
No word yet on pricing. Which means there’s still time for them to come to their senses about this.
The next Bentley Continental GT will make its first appearance at the Paris Motor Show soon, but Bentley has announced plans to reveal the car early on the Net.
Starting Tuesday, Sept. 7, visitors to ContinentalGT.com will be able to watch a slow, week-long unveiling of the car. Bentley says that virtual tours will be offered daily.
Spy shots have given us a few clues on what to expect — a more aggressively sloped rear, new LEDs and a more rounded front fascia — but the mechanical details remain a mystery…at least until we log in with the rest of you on the seventh.
We’ve got a short list of cars that would look unimaginably beautiful as roadsters. By now, manufacturers have gotten to most of them. But the Ferrari 599 is still available in coupe form only…which is tragic. Its gorgeous lines have been begging for a wind-in-your-hair drop-top version since we first laid eyes on them.
But a select few, we’ve learned, actually have seen a topless 599.
Letters leaked onto the net confirm that Ferrari invited a small group of owners to view, and comment on a 599 roadster at an invitation-only event in Monterey, California during Pebble Beach Week earlier this month. Attendees had to sign away their right to comment to the media. Cameras were politely confiscated.
But a few have revealed the car’s existence, anyway. They say it barely had a roof — more of a temporary shade than something structural, much like the Porsche 918 — but Ferrari designers claim it weighs no more than the Coupe version. We can’t wait for this thing to break cover.
Out at the edge of automotive design, there are a few cars so stripped down, so basic, so fundamental that they defy belief. You wonder if they should be called cars at all. Almost go-karts, they are track-only beasts — frames, engines, transmissions, and little else. They lack niceties like air conditioning and sound systems. Some even lack windshields. But we promise — they are faster than imagination.
There’s a new one.
The Donto Motors P1 is the latest overgrown kart to hit track day. Argentina-based Donto motors is behind this thing. They’ve mounted a 1.8-liter turbo’d four from Audi in the back of an FIA-approved racing chassis. This is the engine from the Audi A4, but mounted in a kart-like whippet that weighs under 1,500 pounds.
Performance figures aren’t yet available (this is just a prototype), but Donto says they’re aimed for the Ariel Atom and KTM X-Bow, two little rockets that get from zero to sixty in under four seconds (in the Atom’s case, 2.7. Yeah, read it twice. You saw it right the first time, didn’t you?)
Donto’s car might be a bit slower, thanks to the fact that it has an actual roof and seats two. But we’re betting it will still outrun a 911 without breaking a sweat…and all for about $55k.
