Like a good sauce, a year in the life of CAR needs reducing down before it becomes truly rich and tasty. Here’s the first in a series telling the distilled story of 2014: 12 months of cars, people, incidents and much more stuff, both good and bad… and yes, even ugly. Kicking us off, it’s seven of the year’s most mind-blowing concepts.
1) Nissan Bladeglider
Weird, pointy electric three-seater most notable for pissing off Panoz, whose Nismo-powered DeltaWing racer it resembles.
2) Lamborghini Asterion
Its full name – Asterion LPI 910-4 – is the whole story: LP denotes longitudinale posteriore engine position, I means Ibrido or hybrid, 910 is the combined PS output and 4 means four-wheel drive. It’s Lambo’s first front-wheel driver (shock) but despite beardy intent still packs a V10 (unshock). More importantly, we want to marry it.
3) Maserati Alfieri
Suspiciously beautiful and desirable centenary gift from Maserati to itself surely destined for mothballs. But no! It’s a goer!
4) Toyota FT-1
Or Future Toyota One. ‘Don’t call it the new Supra,’ they said, so we called it the new Supra. Rustled up by Toyota’s LA-based substance-smokers as a Trojan horse PlayStation fantasy, FT-1 was first shown to boss Akio Toyoda on his console, and he immediately thrashed it round Fuji Speedway. His smile suggested he – and we – might be able to do that for real one day. Sigh. Now, back to that Auris…
5) Audi TT 420 Quattro Sport
Knowingly overdone Merc-scarer hinting at future TT RS. Carbon bodykit, rollcage, ludicrous rear wing and loud decals, plus 414bhp 2.0-litre turbo. A junior R8? We drove it, and hell yeah…!
6) Aston Martin DP-100
Another fantasy project made possible by Gran Turismo 6, but anybody not excited by a mid-engined V12 Aston needs help.
7) Peugeot Exalt
Looks pretty amazing for a wannabe 3-series rival, but Peugeot probably wanted to wow its Chinese partner Dongfeng with the promise of, er, oh-la-la? It’s 308-based but you wouldn’t know it. Shame they’ll never dare do it. Also a shame they ran out of silver paint.
Click below for the rest of CAR’s top 100 moments of 2014:
The nine best sports cars of the year
Four seismic Nurburgring laptimes
Eight cars that changed our minds about electric power
Top six people we talked about
Six wishes for 2015
Six back-from-the-dead stories
Six things we said goodbye to
Top 10 motorsport moments
Seven things we never thought we’d see
Six biggest disappointments
Top five tech trends of 2014
Top 10 quotes of 2014
10 great CAR magazine features from 2014