Dodge’s Dart subcompact was just revealed a few weeks ago, but we’ve already got two pieces of future speculation on where the lineup could expand.  First, Mopar will be bringing a concept Dart to the Chicago Auto Show, called the Dart GTS 210 Tribute.  It previews the two “stages” of Mopar upgrades for the new sedan.  Stage 1 will be aesthetic goodies, like the carbon fiber hood with Viper-esque scoop, and matte black side skirts, front diffuser, and other trim -- along with those good looking 18″ alloys.  Stage 2 will bump power output from 184bhp (assuming that’s the 2.4L) to 210bhp, probably through intake/exhaust/tuning.  The other piece of speculation comes from Motor Trend, who brought up the question: what will be under the hood of the next SRT-4?  Remember the original tire-smoking Neon SRT-4 packed 230 horsepower, and the ungainly but fast Caliber packed 285, so MT is guessing the Dart SRT-4 will have at least 300 under the hood.  It’s all guesses, but the smart money’s on a boosted variant of the 2.0L or 2.4L “Tigershark” I4′s, cranking out around the magic 300 mark through the twin-clutch automated manual.  Here’s hoping.

Audi’s just released details on a new engine offering for the A6 and A7 in Europe, and it’s a belter.  Called the 3.0 BiTDi, it’s a twin-turbocharged higher output version of their existing 3.0L diesel V6 engine.  The turbos are set up in a sequential arrangement, and the engine also has regenerative braking and a start/stop system.  This version cranks out a healthy 309bhp between 3,900-4,500rpm, and an even stronger 480lb-ft torque from 1,450-2,800rpm.  All models (A6, A6 Avant, A7) will come with an 8-speed automatic hooked to Quattro AWD, and it’ll be fast: the A6 3.0 BiTDI will do 0-100km/h in 5.1 seconds (the A6 Avant and A7 in 5.3.)  Average fuel mileage is 44.1mpg Imperial for all.  Prices range from £43,810 for the A6 SE Saloon 3.0 BiTDI to £53,436 for the A7 S-Line.  It’s still nowhere near BMW’s new M Performance triple-turbo diesel craziness, but it’s a start.

Dodge is reviving the iconic Viper sports car for model year 2013, and they’ve just released the first teaser image of the car (which is schedule to debut at the New York Auto Show in April).  From this image, we can tell the 2013 (SRT, not Dodge) Viper will have… headlights.  And a hood scoop, and a roof of some sort.  Not very helpful, but this is much better strip tease than the Buick Encore at least.  Supposedly the new Viper will have stability control, and a new version of the gargantuan 8.4L V10 fitted with Fiat’s MultiAir system -- we’ll see.

The Super Bowl is apparently happening soon -- I don’t really do the NFL thing, so I don’t care -- but that does mean there are some great car ads on the way.  There’s also this Honda ad, which reincarnates Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller.  Only he’s actually Matthew Broderick, and instead of his friend’s dad’s Ferrari, he’s driving a Honda CR-V on his “day off.”  I’m sorry, I’m pretty sure Ferris Bueller would be more interested in joyriding in an Aventador.

There are some other funny ads coming out, but Audi’s always a strong contender for best Super Bowl ad.  I think they’ve got this year in the bag, with their minute-long “Vampire Party” spot.  The premise is that Audi’s new LED headlights are so bright, they cause vampires to explode.  I think they’re just poking fun at Volvo, who has gotten on board promoting for the silly “Twilight” tween sparkly vampire franchise.  Still hilarious.

Under the “What are intellectual property rights?” heading, we have the upcoming JAC 43R, made in (you guessed it) China.  Hmm.  It does look a little bit like a Ford F-150.  Surely consumers won’t get them confused, it’s not like it has a blue oval in the front grille… Wait, yes it does.  The continued theft of designs from China is one of the many reasons why they’ve made almost no headway into real automotive markets.  Wonder what’s under the hood?  A Mitsubishi 4G63?

Another terrible teaser image, this one from American electric-car maker Tesla.  This is the silhouette of the upcoming Model X crossover, which has me so excited I can’t stay conscious.  Just kidding, electric pseude SUV’s aren’t my thing -- although the company claims it’s “faster than a Porsche 911 and more spacious than an Audi Q7,” so that’s something.  The Model X will be revealed on February 9th in a live webcast as well as at Tesla’s design studio in Hawthorne, CA.

And finally, I’m curious: how do you stall a car that has an automated manual transmission?  Does this guy just suck at driving, or does Aston Martin have some more programming work to do on the transmission of the One-77, their nearly 2 million dollar bespoke hypercar?  Either way, it’s a mixture of “The sound, oh the glorious sound” and laughter at this dude failing to make a right turn in city traffic.

Japan introduces two competing sports car concepts at Detroit.  What is it, 1989 again?  The Lexus LF-LC and the Acura NSX are both fighting for the spotlight at Cobo hall.  But really, a new NSX?  Can this be for real?

The original NSX is still a high-water mark in sports car development.  For a company as conservative and reactive as Honda, it’s really still shocking that they developed and made it, much less that they kept a loss-leader like the NSX in production for 15 years.  The NSX showed the world a lot of things about sports car.  It was the world’s first exposure to VTEC, or variable valve timing, something we now take almost entirely for granted.  Back then, the high-cam wail of the NSX was totally foreign, an exotic wave of the future.  The NSX set the standard for sports cars in a number of ways, some which sent Ferrari back to the drawing board – after the mediocre “Testarossa Jr.” 348ts, we got the F355.  Things like aluminum construction, a driving position designed around a human being, and driveability and reliability that were no different than a mainstream Honda – Ferrari couldn’t deal with the real-world no pretense nature of the NSX.  It was a car built to be fantastic, not built to be a Ferrari.  Gordan Murray cited the NSX as his inspiration for the Mclaren F1′s ride and handling characteristics.  Praise doesn’t come much higher.

And the driving experience – well, the NSX has input on the chassis setup from a guy named Ayrton Senna.  And Japanese F1 driver Satoru Nakajima, and another guy named Bobby Rahal.  While other sports car entertained with their wayward handling – the 911′s tendency to kill you when you let off the gas, the Corvette’s to kill you when you got on it, and the Esprit/Ferrari’s to kill you if you sat in them – the NSX offered neutral handling, predictable responses, and immense performance.  That’s why people today are drooling over the 22-year-old NSX, but not many people remember the 348.  It reset the expectations, and it was so good people kept buying them for 15 years with just the most minor of revisions.  But then it stopped.  2005 rolled around, the last NSX went through the doors, the end.  Sure, there was the Advanced Sports Car Concept at the 2007 Detroit show, with it’s front-mounted V10 and AWD, which eventually turned into the HSV-010 GT race car.  But no road car.

This new concept NSX is promising, though.  Not without reservations – we’ll get to that – but it’s a sign of the resurgence that Honda’s been talking up.  It might not be simply a modern-looking NSX; it’s different in a lot of ways, but it might be the paradigm-shifting culture shock that it’s dad was.

For starters, it sure looks like an NSX.  We’ve actually seen this before:  the pictures of the prototype NSX Roadster that Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is driving on the set of the new Iron Man movie are remarkably close to the coupe presented here.  It doesn’t have the elegance of the original, but nothing else does.  The front end is all knife-edged and multi faceted and angry like most modern Acuras, but the rest of it has an organic, flowing shape to it.  Good looking car.

The most interesting thing is what’s under the skin.  While the original NSX relied on a naturally-aspirated V6, a manual, and RWD there’s a lot more going on here.  The rear wheels are powered by a “next-generation VTEC V-6 engine with direct injection” – through a dual-clutch automated manual, with a built-in electric motor.  But wait, there’s more – each front wheel has it’s own electric motor as well.  Honda calls this setup Sports Hybrid SH-AWD, and it’s pretty clever.  The individual front electric motors can provide positive or negative torque to each wheel to correct mid-corner handling – giving the same effect as an e-diff but with electric motors.

The idea is provide supercar performance (and admittedly, the thing will probably be a rocket with a high-tech V6 and three electric motors and through the road AWD) with a nod towards environmental responsibility.  And Honda’s a company that knows a thing or two about the green angle, so I tend to believe them.  As an automotive purist who’s a fan of the “that’s unnecessary, remove it” mentality, this isn’t an NSX.  An NSX is a simple, lightweight, mid engined aluminum sports car.  This new concept makes an R8 V10 seem simple by comparison.

But looking at what the original NSX represented – the car that reset the supercar convention – then this could be a fitting replacement.  It could be the sports car that shows the rest of them you can pull 3-second 0-60 times and get good gas mileage with minimal emissions.  Honda is, and always has been above all else, an engineering company.  I’d say this is a trick piece of engineering.  The company says the new NSX should go into production within the next three years, developed by Honda America R&D and built in Ohio.  Stay tuned – this could be interesting.  Gallery with press photos below!

Photos by Kanishka Sonnadara

Is this the next Saab 9-3? And more importantly, shouldit be the next Saab 9-3. That is the question. Saab’s most recent concept car, the Pheonix, had a name chosen for what the company hoped would happen – seeing Saab rise from the ashes after being declared dead. Anyone paying attention (and a lot that aren’t) know the roller coaster Saab has been through in just the past year.

And boy, it goes back even farther than that. We’ll spare you the details though. Chief Executive Officer Victor Mueller and company have pulled every rabbit out of their hat that they can, and their latest deal involves a Chinese buyout. Yes, wholly and completely Chinese owned.

Pang Da and Youngman have submitted a bid, which was accepted by the Saab, that an investment of around $850 million in future product. That’s the kind of cash Saab needs to survive, not little lifelines thrown to it every three to six months.

Future product on the drawing board includes the next-generation 9-3, Saab’s volume product. This will give Saab a thoroughly modern lineup, hopefully enabling it to reach profitability after these dreadful past few years.

We’ve always had a soft spot for Saab in our hearts, which is why we are glad to see something regarding new product. A new sketch has been leaked on the internet, which could possibly be the next-generation 9-3. It mixes elements from the 9-5 and past Saabs (check out that roofline), and the result is very good looking; at least as good-looking as a grainy black-and-white sketch can be. The sketch isn’t just hearsay either, it has been leaked from a Saab pitch to the Sweden’s National Debt Office and the European Investment Bank in January.

Looking good. Saab designer Jason Castriota says the new car will be a bit smaller than the one it replaces, and that it will draw on the company’s heritage. It better be an amazing hit product, because that is what Saab needs right now. Whether it hits the road or not will depend on Chinese governmental approval of the Saab deal, and any bumps in the roads in between. We’d like to think the drama is over now, but how many times have we hoped that about Saab…….

So, why are Ford fixing the decidedly unbroken formula for the next car? Design boss J Mays, champion of ‘retro-futurism’ and he who penned the 2005 model going strong today, says it’s time for a new car “to win all of the Mustang faithful yet bring the brand forward as well.” Basically, it’s got to walk the tightrope of hinting it’s a Mustang, but “signal the Mustang has another 50 years of life left.” No pressure then.

The gamble is especially risky since that the Mustang’s doldrum years, in which many thought the car had lost its way, were during the modernisation-crazed Eighties, when the car first abandoned the pony car profile and classic grille/headlight combo. The aero look, unremarkable underpinnings and downsized engines were responsible for a huge sales slump (as was the irritation of an ongoing oil crisis) which almost led to Ford killing off the entire Mustang line in favour of a front-drive Mazda-based car. Only affection for the earlier Mustangs stopped the rot.

Tapping into this love of the original cars, by combining the styling of McQueen’s Bullitt star with modern comfort and safety requirements, has made the Mustang a runaway success once again, just as its grandad was. (It’s still the fastest selling car, ever.) The modern muscle game was such a goldmine Chevy and Dodge couldn’t ignore it, wading in with their own interpretations of past glory, and seeing similar success.

As a business case goes, it’s foolproof, since it’s the exact same philosophy used back in the Sixties; take a simple platform, a big engine, cover it in a handsome body, and sell it for peanuts. Despite recession this and environment that, you can pick up the current top ‘Stang, the 550 bhp Shelby GT500, for less than $50k. That’s £31k over this side of The Pond, around £20k less than a BMW M3, which is 130bhp down, straight out of the blocks.

The current Mustang’s slogan is ‘All Legend. No Compromise.” The danger for Ford is that when the all new car comes along in 2014, it’ll have the legendary name, but not the looks, and as such it’ll be going head to head with the best from Germany, the UK, and the USA,  but won’t have that retro-genius trump card to fall back on. In its sink or swim market, Stateside, people buy the M3 because it’s the best drive, or the Yankee muscle for how it looks. The new pony car is going to have to rely on a special drive, like none of its predecessors, if it’s to last “another 50 years of life.”

A motoring icon and a clean sheet of paper. Like I said, no pressure.

Pictured above is a rendering of an RS version of the Q3. Hot or not? Definitely hot; if maybe a but pointless. The Q3 was born to compete against the BMW X1, a very successful model brought forth by BMW’s segment-bending exploits. In Europe the X1 has proved to be a big hit for its crossover-like looks, small size and practicality. Audi rushed to provide an answer with its Q3 crossover, and it has gone on sale in markets around the world.

Audi seemingly ruled out sales of the Q3 in the U.S at launch. BMW, on the other hand, has announced the X1 will be sold here. Despite being on sale since November 2009 in Europe, a U.S launch date has been pushed back until late next year due to high demand.

When it does arrive eventually, BMW expects sales to be small due its (presumably) limited appeal. With the economy not faring so well and gas prices at high levels, could the calculus be changed? Audi is reportedly reconsidering its position on the Q3, says AutoWeek.

Audi AG board member Peter Schwarzenbauer doesn’t need any convincing: “I think the U.S. is ready for a car below the Q5.” Audi of America president Johan de Nysschen said it is still being debated though: “We have to look at the economic feasibility, and it has to hit targets. We have to overcome certain challenges.” If it does come, it will be in three years when the receives a mid-cyle enhancement. The challenge is pricing; customers will find it pointless if it is priced closely to the Q5, but if you go too low Audi is unable to make a profit. Its an interesting conundrum that could depend on how BMW fares with the X1 in the U.S next year.

Concept cars serve different roles.  For instance, when BMW shows us an “M5 Concept,”  you can safely bet a $100 bill that the production M5 will look just like that, only without the black wheels and license plates that say “concept.”

Ford and Mazda are different, though.  While sometimes their concept cars preview production cars, most of the time they preview the company’s latest styling ideology.  So while I wish Mazda would put something as sexy as the Shinari into production, it’s really just a preview of how the brand’s mainstream products will look.

Same goes for the latest concept that Ford is displaying at the Frankfurt Auto Show this year, the Evos.  Don’t expect to see it, or something like it, at a dealer any time soon.  Know why?  Well, when have you ever seen a production car with doors like this?

Yeah, gullwing doors is a no.  However cool it would be to see a production car sprouting a pair.  But as a styling exercise, the Evos is nicely devoid of a lot of the overtly showy stuff that concepts usually sprout to wow crowds while it’s on a turn table.

According to J Mays, Ford Design head, the design is intended to “Seduce, not Provoke.”  While that seems like an almost direct stab at former BMW design head Christopher Bangle, it makes a lot of sense when looking at some previous Ford of Europe designs.  Things like the thin headlights, hexagonal grille opening, etc are cues you can expect to find on future Ford designs.

In typical show car fashion, the drivetrain is a plug-in Hybrid with lithium-ion batteries borrowed from the C-Max Energi.  Also usual for a concept with no production intent, the interior is purely a flight of fancy.  I do like the controls located on the seat, though!

The new styling language of the Evos seems quite a bit toned down from some of the things Ford of Europe has been putting out lately.  Expect to see some of the cues from this car showing up on production Fords in the next 5 years or so, and there’ll be more of the Evos to see at Frankfurt!

America has the Wrangler, Japan has the Land Cruiser and Patrol, and Britain has the Defender.  Well, and the Bowler Wildcat and Nemesis.  But while the Defender continues to carry LR’s true off-roader torch (it received a new emissions-compliant 2.2L Diesel for this year!), it’s not long for this world.

Land Rover without a Defender is like Chevrolet without a Corvette, so a replacement is in the works.  This concept car to debut at the Frankfurt Show this year, dubbed the DC100, is a preview of a modernized Defender.

So… what is is?  Well, Land Rover has been pretty sparse on actual details on the DC100 concept, and they’ve only released the two pictures you see here.  From it’s general proportions, it looks related to the Evoque soft-roader, which I find a bit hard to believe is a reasonable basis for a Defender replacement, but we just don’t know.  The off-road “covered with mud” shot looks a bit forced, but it’s still nice to see a concept car on a trail.  I wouldn’t have wanted to be the guy to take a multi-million-dollar bespoke concept truck onto a trail, that’s for sure.

LR does say it intends to produce a Defender replacement by 2015, but not necessarily that it’ll look like the DC100.  More details on this intriguing concept will be revealed September 13 at Frankfurt, so stay tuned!

Sometimes staying up late on a Saturday night is a good thing. The thing about living in Malaysia is that there are many food stalls and car washes open till the wee hours of the morning. This means that one can actually enjoy having coffee or tea Al fresco whilst having their car washed. So we did just that last weekend and so did a lot of others. And amazingly at about two o’clock in the morning while we were winding down our session to head home, we saw a Lotus Evora drive by into the car wash beside us.

It isn’t often you get to see one in the flesh over here. Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches and those Japanese performance cars are everywhere in Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur, these days. The incredible fact is that while the Malaysian car manufacturer Proton owns Lotus, there aren’t many of them plying the streets of Kuala Lumpur, aside from a handful of Lotus Elise Mark 1s and some Exiges (if you’re lucky to spot one). Within a span of two hours, we managed to see two Ferrari F430s, a Lamborghini Gallardo, a GC8 Subaru Impreza WRX, a GD Impreza STI, a Mitsubishi Evo 5 and 8, Mercedes CLKs, a Nissan 350z or two, a couple of Porsche Cayennes, FD2R Honda Civic Type-Rs and so on. But we only saw one Lotus Elise Mk1.

So as I mentioned, a Lotus Evora entering a car wash in the middle of the night is something different and Onny Izwan, a member in our remaining party of four (after a few others had left) and an ex-automotive journalist (who now writes for a bicycle magazine) decided that we should head over to the car wash to check it out.

It turned out that it wasn’t a fully registered Evora but one that was still on its test plates and one still run by Lotus Cars Malaysia. So the four of us gathered round the car which was just washed and was being vacuumed. Two chaps wearing Lotus t-shirts appeared from nowhere and greeted us with smiles. Things were getting good.

It turned out that the chaps from Lotus Malaysia had just got back from a 600 or so kilometer shakedown drive from Kuantan, which is located to the east of Kuala Lumpur. The white Lotus Evora that we were looking at was actually the Lotus Evora IPS (Intelligent Precision Shift). New for 2011, Lotus’ Evora IPS is basically the automatic version of the Evora and the first Lotus to ever have such a transmission since they stopped making one in the late 1980s (the Lotus Excel SA). It is basically the base Evora with the 276bhp 3.5liter Toyota V6 engine sans 6 speed manual but with a 6 speed torque convertor automatic gearbox. You see, Lotus is actually still in the midst of acclimatizing the Evora IPS for tropical climates and we – by sheer chance – got to hear the news first hand.

One of the Lotus guys mentioned that the Evora IPS needed fine tuning of its shift patterns as well as some transmission tweaks so that it suits the very hot and humid tropical regions like Malaysia and this is why the Evora IPS isn’t on sale over here at the moment. We also found out first hand that this Evora is actually the (near) future of Lotus in the United States of America, the land where automatic gearboxes are welcomed and where manual gearboxes are a hard sell. Regardless of the handful that relish such a transmission over in automotive blogs and forums over there as well as on Car Throttle. One of the guys piloting the Evora, Mr Ahmed Shahriman Rahman, was part of Marketing and Branding for Lotus Malaysia and he mentioned this fact whilst we discussed Lotus’ reason for ending the sale of the Lotus Elise and Exige from the United States and also over in Canada. The love of the general American populace for not changing gears manually has now made some petrolheads and gearheads over there lose out on something really intimate.

And our probing and staring at the Evora IPS continued. We noticed the lack of any gear shifter on the center console where the gearstick used to be. We also noticed buttons taking the place of it and that everything was mainly button operated. The flappy pedals behind the steering wheel would operate or override full automatic shifting if the driver wants to. Aside from that, the Evora IPS is basically the same as the Evora but not the supercharged Evora S which would only come with the manual gearbox at the moment.

Interior build quality seems decent and very unlike the sparse interiors of the Elise and the Exige. This one had the full leather Premium pack option and some other optional goodies. The Evora is quite accommodating for larger sized people and I didn’t have to suffer the  ‘Lotus entry or exit position’ in this car. Yes, the door sills are still thick and you still need to climb over it then let your bum drop into the seat. It was easier for me to reach under and pull the seat back, climb in then re-adjust the seat to the desired seating position instead of squeezing straight into the cabin. Yes, it’s cosy for a chubby boy like me unlike the small Elise and Exige.

Anyway, our discussion with the boys from Lotus continued. We also discussed Lotus’ plan for the future and the ambitious plans of Dany Bahar, CEO of Lotus. Yes, there was scepticism on the plan to move the Lotus brand upscale from its track day special roots like the current Elise and Exige but if you look at things from Lotus’ perspective, sweeping changes were necessary for long term survival. The new models signify these changes and Lotus actually needs to go the way of Ferrari and Porsche to survive in the long run.

Lotus purists might be cringing and moaning over the slight dismissal of the ‘just add lightness’ formula that founder Colin Chapman kept indoctrinated into the psyche of all Lotus employees.  I suppose the ‘lightness’ design cues will still be kept, but in line with the required change in the overall business plan. But if you actually see what the majority of the performance car buying public wants, it is actually a balance of occasional track day forays and creature comforts. The bottom-line is that people with lined pockets still need luxury. In fact, this is also one reason why Lotus does not do well here in Malaysia. We prefer medium/well-done instead of rare (or raw in this case). It needs to be properly cooked and stewed or in this case, air-conditioning, leather, cup holders as well as sports suspension, sports exhaust systems and a full blown bespoke engine to sell sports cars over here. On that note, this Lotus Evora IPS still does not have proper cup holders. You could stuff a can of cola into the door pockets, but thats about it. You can’t be holding your cuppa after a morning’s drive on your favourite B-road. In short, if the concept of pure performance ruled over having a compromise, we’d all be buying a Porsche 911 GT3 RS instead of the various other iterations of the 911.

One important fact confirmed to us directly was that the Lotus Elan concept car (pictured below) was indeed shelved for the moment due to its similarity to the Evora. And Lotus intends to make the transition for the new Elan from the Evora as seamless as possible. We shall most probably see the Evora evolve even more before that happens. From what I can tell the Lotus Evora may get that facelift to keep it inline with the styling cues of the upcoming Esprit.

And speaking of the upcoming Lotus Esprit, Lotus is indeed working on a new bespoke V8 engine to power the car. Now this isn’t a make or break kind of idea for Lotus. According to Ahmed, building a bespoke V8 engine isn’t and shouldn’t be that hard for Lotus. Those with good memory would remember that it wasn’t too long ago (the mid-1990s) that Lotus came up with their own V8 engine for the previous Lotus Esprit V8. That V8 engine was an aluminium 3.5-litre twin-turbocharged V8 that made 350bhp. It basically tells us that it shouldn’t be rocket science for Lotus to come up with a new V8 for the new Esprit and this was indeed confirmed during our chat that night. No chance of an engine being the cause of a company’s downfall, like what happened to TVR when they decided to build their own AJP V8 engines. That being said, it could still be a while off and we may still see a Toyota V8 powering the first of the new Esprit.

Those that were wondering about what Lotus is doing in Formula 1 is that it really is about furthering the brand image of Lotus. It is basically confirmed that their current partnership with Renault in F1 is indeed better than last year’s collaboration with the guys from Team Lotus, an outfit run by Air Asia owner Tony Fernandes. Prior to this current mid-season break Group Lotus seem to be pleased with the progress of the Lotus Renault F1 team. Of course, Robert Kubica’s off-season accident did put a damper on their race plans.

We were also told that Proton is now pushing for Lotus to have more presence in Malaysia than before as throughout the 15 years of owning Lotus, this hasn’t been done. It should, as I honestly do not want to keep on seeing those bread and butter Protons with their ‘suspension tuned by Lotus‘ tagline and badging instead of the real thing plying the roads around here. This actually is one reason why the two chaps from Lotus decided to have their Lotus washed in this part of Kuala Lumpur, a good 40 or so kilometers from Lotus Cars Malaysia’s HQ in Shah Alam. The car wash (and the eatery we frequented) is located slightly upscale area around Ampang Point and is the spot to go for supercar watching. Check out the Novitec Rosso F430 exiting the car wash in the photograph above. So taking a Lotus to where the action usually is, is actually a wise marketing move.

And so we go back to the Evora IPS. It actually looks good up close in real life. Photos do not do justice to this car. All of us basically agreed that the Evora has real road presence. It looks small and slightly dainty in the photographs but it isn’t like looking at an Elise or an Exige. It is actually much more than that.  But it needs cupholders. Really.

So what does this tell us? Lotus seems to be doing quite well overall and their business plan seems pretty sound. All these details from a visit to the local eatery and the local car wash in the middle of the night thousands of miles from Hethel, the actual home of Lotus. Staying up late is a good thing after all.

Thanks to Ahmed Shahriman Rahman of Lotus Cars Malaysia, who so kindly accommodated our questions and comments at 2.30am on a Sunday morning. The Lotus Evora IPS is on sale in the UK with prices starting at around £53,500 and will be sold in Malaysia with prices starting at RM460,000 without Road Tax and Insurance

Some pictures courtesy of Adlis K

A frequent complaint about Toyota has been the company’s focus on uninspiring, bland designs that forsake any kind of excitement. For those looking for performance models and an engaging driving experience, there are no offerings.

That is a dangerous position to be for a mainstream manufacturer that needs to engage enthusiasts and the youth market. The super expensive LFA isn’t going to cut it in this regard. The joint Toyota/Subaru sportscar, previewed by the original FT-86 Concept and followed by the Scion FR-S Concept, is Toyota’s answer to this problem.

A new report on fan forum Club4AG says that the car is being developed with no expenses spared, and sheds light on some interesting details about the cars program. This information was gleaned from a meeting between site member Moto-P and chief project engineer Tetsuya Tada.

Toyota is assigning top priority to the program, with Chief Executive Officer Akio Toyoda personally overseeing and selecting key people involved in the program. He is even said to stop in and drive the car, giving it a major champion within the company.

While there is a lot of hype and excitement (this a major fan), there are a few pieces of information that stick out. For one, the dash is reportedly being designed to easily accommodate a roll cage without requiring the dash to be cut up. This would enable the car to be easily used in competitions. Under the hood, the car would have mounts to easily switch out to Subaru’s boxer four-cylinder.

The standard Toyota engine is said to get its sounds tuned by Yamaha, in order to have a top notch aural experience worthy of the car’s aspirations. Interestingly, the website member also floats the idea of no CD player or navigation system. This would save weight and cut down on cost. There would be an iPod/MP3 player hookup though – and the thinking is that this would be the perfect setup for the younger buyers Toyota is aiming for with this.

We’re keen on seeing if this information turns out to carry over to the production car, and more excited than ever before for the new sportscar to be unveiled.

At the beginning of the month, Land Rover released more details about its new Evoque crossover.

They include its starting price – $43,995 for the four door model, and the 28 MPG highway figure for the front-wheel drive model. That makes it the most fuel-efficient Land Rover ever – a huge departure, no doubt.

Land Rover certainly has no inhibitions about being different with the Evoque. Radical styling, turbocharged four-cylinder engines and a two-door model that most said wouldn’t be a very viable seller.

A new report from Autoblog.nl says that Land Rover could be looking to take the being different theme even further, with a four-door convertible in the vein of Nissan’s Murano CrossCabriolet.

The car would have a folding roof, produced in England and likely very low in volume. There is even the possibility of it being tied in with a special edition model – such as the Victoria Beckham Evoque that Autocar speculated about earlier in the month.

It might seem like a daring move, but given that Nissan shocked everyone with the Murano CrossCabriolet, anything is on the table. Sources say an Evoque without a roof could be appearing sometime in 2013. Meanwhile, standard Evoque two and four-door versions are going on sale in the United States this summer.