Some may think what we have here is a blatant case of plagiagism. However, Malaysian automaker Proton has a long history or dealing with both Lotus and Mitsubishi (with some of it's cars being Mitsubish derived), so both of these cars don't come as much of a surprise.
What is surprising though is what their idea of a facelift is. Where some might go to great length to hide their engineering cost-cutting roots, Proton saw it fit to simply paint sections matte black and overlay some of the clunkiest fender extension in recent memory. This concept stinks like a skunk and looks like one too. They also bring to mind the
black and white cookie episode of Seinfeld, mainly because they makes me want to vomit.
For those who can't place the donor cars, the Jebal above is a warmed over Lancer Ralliart and the Lekir below is a similarly warmed over Lotus Europa (which itself is no longer in production).
There's rumors that the Europa could live on in Malaysia (
not unlike the Elan did in Korea), which is good news for sports car fans. Unfortunately, compared to it's Lotus siblings, the Europa amounts to a average looking girl in a group of supermodels. I'll take what I can get though (as long as it doesn't look like this black and white disaster).
This answer to this question: "What do you get when you combine an Austin Healey Sprite with a modern mid-engine sports car and a golf cart?"
I'm quite sure the land this Land Cruiser will be cruising is mostly paved. And I think it needs more lights.
The 1977 Volkswagon prototype by Luigi Colani. I suppose this was the early days of aerodynamic design for everday cars (Citreon DS and Chrysler Airflow notwithstanding), so it could be considered groundbreaking, but you really have to wonder about some of the details. Is the a button in the interior that extrudes Playdo from the front grille? Why does the steering wheel look like it's going to bite me? Also, those seats look like a little too much like female anatomy for comfort.
How can someone have thought this would be a good idea? Besides looking God-awful, it must be the world's most uncomfortable limo (besides the fact that the Prowler was underpowered in the first place).
The Roding Roadster is an experimental small track car in the vein of the KTM X-Bow. While producing impressive performance numbers (0-60 in under 4 seconds, 1.4G on the skidpad), it seems all of the money went to fortifying the performance of this ultra low volume production car rathing than making it something someone would want to look at.
