Concept

For the last decade or so, the auto industry seems to have developed a collective knack for making enthusiasts hurry up and wait. Alfa Romeo has been threatening to return to the U.S. (We’re not counting the rare and pricey 8C Competizione and Spider as a proper return.) since its stepmom (Chrysler) was shacking up with some domineering German. Each of the Detroit Three has said, “Our half-ton diesel pickup is just around the bend,” though they clearly haven’t been referring to the next bend. And if the concept versions of the new jointly-developed Toyota/Subaru sport coupe aren’t piling up like cordwood in some Japanese warehouse, we’ll eat a live electric eel.

But one of the most galling fits of carmaker procrastination has to be the saga of Jaguar’s smaller-than-the-XK sports car. First there was the XK180 Concept of 1998. Then, two years later, there was the F-Type Concept. The production version was going to be front, no, mid-engined! Then Ford axed the project, then started on it again, killed it again, and sold Jaguar to Tata. Now the baby Jag sports car ball is rolling again, and once again a concept version has been unleashed upon the public. Its name? C-X16.

Six-cylinder pony cars have, for better or worse, been derided by many as being “secretary specials” for, well, ever. And, in fairness, many youthful, independent career girls – and not just in the appointment-scheduling and dictation-taking fields, but also the likes of hairdressing, retail and teaching (Hi Mom!) – have signed on the dotted lines for such cars, usually because they were deemed by their purchasers to be sporty, cute, economical, a good value, and/or not too powerful for non-hoon feminine tastes.

But as the Bard of Hibbing says, the times, they are a’ changin’. The current V6 variants of the Camaro and Mustang both feature sophisticated four-cam, 24-valve mills producing in excess of 300hp, with exact figures that meet (in the case of the Mustang) or beat (in the case of the Camaro) the outputs of their immediate predecessors’ base V8s. How’s that for progress? It also begs the question: What other vehicles could benefit from these compact, rev-happy mills? For at least one industrial designer, the answer is motorcycles.

The smallest and cheapest Audi sold on these shores may be the five-door A3, but for Europe and many other parts of the world the Four-Ring Posse’s entry level model is the A1, a front-drive-only three-door subcompact cast in the Mini Cooper and Fiat 500 mold. It’s definitely a looker, but not much of a performer.

Of course, that’s nothing a metric buttload (which, as everyone knows, is equivalent to 0.861 of an Imperial buttload) of horsepower and quattro all-wheel-drive can’t fix, and fix it Audi has by creating the A1 Clubsport Quattro concept. Better still, this white mighty mite’s coming out party is this week’s Wörtherseetour, which is pretty much Woodstock for aficionados of Audi (as well as sister brands Volkswagen, Seat and Škoda) and is held on the Wörthersee (Lake Wörther auf Englisch) in Austria.

Up until very recently, electric cars had a reputation of being slow, unexciting transportation appliances (This despite the fact the fastest car in the world from 1898 to 1904 was a French electric car, the Jeantaud Duc.). Lately, though, battery-powered cars are starting to come across as legitimate performance cars, due in no small part to cars like the Tesla Roadster and the Mercedes-Benz SLS E-Cell.

Now Nissan seems to be jumping onto the exciting EV bandwagon. First was the Esflow concept, which premiered at the Geneva Motor Show last month, and now the company’s tuning arm, NISMO, has created a radical, widebody racing version of the Leaf that’s on display at the New York Auto Show. But it turns out there’s very little Leaf underneath.