8 weirdest cars at the Paris Motor Show | GRR
The Paris Motor Show 2022 is full of incredibly important cars for the future of the European motoring industry. Renault for example has gone full tilt into retro-futuristic concepts that will spawn real machines. But, in amongst those more sensible options there’s also a few that make us question the future of what people like to now call “mobility”.
1,000PS Fiat Multipla
If you were to imagine what would happen if some YouTubers raised around a million Euros in order to build their dream car, your mind could go in one of two directions. Either they are about to ruin a stunning supercar by making something that looks like Mansoury-lite. Or, they are going to take a weird car and give it a thousand horsepower.
Thankfully for us at the Paris Motor Show we saw the latter. Vilebrequin is a French YouTube channel with a penchant for doing stupid things with cars. But apparently their ultimate dream was to make a Fiat Multipla with four figures worth of horsepower. This is the result, what once was a slightly gawky MPV with three seats in the front is now a bewinged monster with a massive diffuser and more power than a Ferrari 812 Superfast. And you know what, we love it.
Citytransformer
The solution to the world’s transport problems is, apparently, a transforming EV that’s just a single metre wide… most of the time.
The Citytransformer’s trick is not that it seats two people, because that’s actually another thing that it somehow does. It’s actually that, if you want to leave the city and go around one of those things they call corners, it can grow. Yes the entire track can grow from one to 1.4m, allowing for extra stability. That means you can do speeds of up to 90km/h out in the countryside and then just convert back into thin mode and stay below 40km/h in town. Parking shouldn’t be a problem again, and you’ll probably be able to join all the motorbikes on the Paris Peripherique that filter at wild speeds between the waiting cars.
Mobilize Solo Concept
Have you ever thought to yourself on your drive home that, this is nice and all, but it would be much better if you were standing up. Well, the Mobilize Solo Concept is here to help you realise that dream.
OK, so that’s not entirely true, it does sort of have a seat, although it’s more of a cushion that you perch on. Like those benches at the end of a tube train where you balance rather than sitting. It’s a three-wheeler and is actually a product of the Renault Group, rather than some wacky start-up. It’s 137cm long, 90cm wide and 175cm tall and capable of whizzing around at up to 25km/h, so it’s not exactly speedy, but faster than walking. Although how much you would want to keep going once you came to a corner, we’re yet to find out.
Ora Next Cat
You’ve heard of the Ora Funky Cat, a small Chinese electric car built by the company formally known as Great Wall Motors (now GWM). Well, there’s another one coming, and this time it’s… well it’s not exactly a looker is it.
The Ora Next Cat is bigger than the Funky Cat, has four doors and a saloon boot. But most strikingly of all it’s just plain ugly. The front has more than an unfortunate passing to the modern incarnation of the beetle and the rear looks like someone tried to copy the Panamera and sort of got bored trying. Unfortunately for Ora, altogether it looks like it was designed 15 years ago and that’s a shame. Because just behind it was the Funky Cat GT, which looks ace.
Lormauto Twingo
The first-generation Renault Twingo is the ultimate holiday car spot. A machine we never got in the UK and that our country has been all the poorer for it. Even today there’s always an abundance of Twingos to be found littering the streets of central Europe. But what to do with these tiny workhorses as their lives begin to run short?
Well, French firm Lormauto thinks it has the answer. Convert them into EVs, replace the interior with a fancy modern one with screens an’ all that, and then allow people to have them for the princely sum of €100 a month. Yes, an electric car, that looks awesome, for €1,200 a year. We think it’s brilliant, the principal is not to throw away old workhorses, but give them a new life. Bravo.
Still a bit weird to see a Twingo with a touchscreen though.
Full-size Lego Lamborghini Sian
Yes, there’s now quite a lot of full-sized Lego cars these days, but most of them appear to be made of, well, Lego. This one, which is a scaled-up version of the Lego Technic model that you or I could build, seems to have been made out of alien materials.
That’s probably because it’s made of Technic rather than just normal Lego, but even that knowledge doesn’t make it seem any less strange. The body panels have been put together using hundreds of flat Technic panels and it gives it a scaly, almost reptilian look. Then it also has some clearly real wheels and lights and, altogether, it’s just a little unnerving to look at.
Mega is back!
Remember Mega, that bonkers off-roading supercar from the 1990s. Wasn’t that a brilliant thing. Imagine if it came back, wouldn’t that be awesome. I bet it would make some slightly off the wall all-roading hypercar. It’d have a million horsepower and do 0-62 so fast on gravel that it reversed time.
Well, I have some bad news. Mega is back. It’s part of Aixam. And Aixam in France makes what are known as Voirtures Sans Permis. Or as we would probably call them: microcars.
The new Mega now makes electric versions of Aixam’s microcars, but with some of the bodywork stripped so they look more rugged. And, really, don’t let the looks fool you. These tiny machines are really no taller than the standard car, you can just now see the suspension, so you think they’re bigger. I feel a little bit sick now.
A Hydrogen car powered by suitcases
Now. The Namx HUV is actually really cool. It has a body designed by Pininfarina, it is a part Moroccan enterprise, making it one of Africa’s first car makers, and it’s got a really innovative solution to Hydrogen power.
The problem is, no matter how much they say that it solves all the world’s problems, they don’t seem to be able to tell us… how. In short, the idea is that the HUV has a hydrogen fuel cell, which you top up not by waiting for hydrogen to flow into your car at super-high pressure, but by just pulling a small suitcase of hydrogen out of the boot and replacing it with another.
If it works it’s brilliant. Imagine just pulling up to the refilling station, pulling the spent cartridges out of the boot of your car and popping in some new ones. It would be a bit like refilling your printer, except still less expensive. But right now it’s just a concept car on a stand that keep randomly birthing these big cartridges.
Call us when it works.
Photography by Ben Miles.