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Remember the Ariel Hipercar? We’ll forgive you if not. Announced back in 2017 and revealed in the flesh in 2022, the bonkers-looking project from a manufacturer best known for strapping engines to track-focused scaffolding was set as an ambitious attempt to take on the electric hypercar market. Its specs certainly put it into those realms. A quad-motor setup drawing power from a 62kWh Cosworth battery pack was said to produce a monstrous 1207bhp and 1330lb ft of torque, a sub two-second 0-62mph time and an actual turbine as an optional range extender. A far cry from a Honda-powered Atom, then. It seemed the project was progressing neatly, with a few UK journalists even able to get behind the wheel of a prototype. The feedback was generally pretty promising, and several outlets reported healthy orders Ariel Hipercar, rear Then… nothing. Things have been very quiet on the Ariel Hipercar in the years following. However, we’ve been told the project is still very much alive despite that. Car Throttle spoke with Ariel sales manager Ben Calderaro-Gunn at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, who said: “Hipercar is still being worked on. The battery still has a lot of work to be done on it, and there’s the budget. “We’re a small company. Yes, we were initially in it with a few companies but we’re managing things on our own at the moment. With other projects coming along, the priority shifts away from it. It is still there, ticking along in the background.” Ariel Atom 4RR Given Ariel’s spread of projects, though, the shift in Hipercar priority doesn’t come as a great surprise. Last year, the Nomad 2 launched and just weeks ago, the serious Atom 4RR. There’s also a production version of the electric E-Nomad Concept still in the works, too, although that could also be some time off. “We feel there is a market”, said Calderaro-Gunn, “It’s a really small market… but with the batteries we’ve got at the moment, we need to get more range and we need the cost to come down quite considerably. At the moment, the battery alone is more than the rest of the car together”. Ariel has yet to put a timescale on either the Hipercar or E-Nomad making it to production, so watch this space. Read More

Scary to think it’s already coming up on three and a half years since Gran Turismo 7 came out, right? Time is inevitable, we’ll all perish someday, etc, etc. On a more positive Monday note, more cars are coming to the game for free later this week. We’re yet to know for certain what those three are, but at least one of them is quite obvious in the standard-issue silhouette teaser image posted by Kazunori Yamauchi on not-Twitter across the weekend. That being a variant of the R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R, quite clearly, although which of them it’ll be is a bit of a mystery. A Nismo 400R is our first port of call, though the clear giveaways of the car – its vented bonnet and Omori factory-fit Rays wheels aren’t immediately visible in the images. An M-Spec Nür could be possible too, given the clear absence of a NACA duct on the bonnet, though we’d be a little disappointed given the almost-identical V-Spec II Nür is already present in-game. R34 Nissan GT-R Nismo Z-Tune It’s seemingly not the only Nissan, either. To its right appears to be a Qashqai, of all things. Thrilling, we know, but it follows a trend of family crossovers coming to the game in recent months – namely the Toyota C-HR, Mazda CX-30 and Peugeot 2008. Quite the Sunday Cup line-up forming there. 2024 Nissan Qashqai, front Rounding out the trio of the new additions is a little cutie hiding in the back, seemingly a Honda N-One. This Kei box has been on sale in Japan for over a decade now and is consistently one of Japan’s best-selling cars, so it’s not really a shock to see it come to Gran Turismo. Rather, we’re surprised it hadn’t already happened. Honda N-One No word yet on any further content coming to GT7 with update 1.61 at this stage. We’ll always hope for a new track, but given how late into the game’s life cycle we are now and Polyphony’s attention surely on GT8 behind the scenes, we’re not expecting.  Read More

The noughties were undeniably a golden age for concept cars, but for every Chrysler ME Four-Twelve, Ford Shelby Cobra or Mazda Furai, there were dozens that were at best forgettable and at worst utterly baffling. Whether they were confusing, didn’t fit with their manufacturers’ vibe or were just downright ugly, here are 10 concept cars from the 2000s that we’d rather forget about. Audi Rosemeyer Audi Rosemeyer We kick off with a concept that helped ring in the new millennium in truly stomach-churning style. We get what Audi was going for with 2000’s Rosemeyer – it was supposed to be a callback to the Auto Union grand prix racers of the 1930s, and was named after one of their star drivers. Unfortunately, trying to transpose 1930s open-wheel racer design cues onto a turn-of-the-millennium coupe results in, well… this absolute mess. It did have an early version of the W16 engine that would go on to power the Bugatti Veyron, though, so that’s something. Peugeot Quark Peugeot Quark Unveiled at the 2004 Paris show, the Peugeot Quark was essentially a weird elongated quad bike powered by hydrogen fuel cells and with the ridiculous gurning face of the 407 saloon grafted onto its front fairing. Who was asking for this? We have no idea, and frankly, we’re happier staying in the dark on that one. Mercedes Bionic Mercedes Bionic If you’re going to use a fish as the major design inspiration for a car, you want to go for something sleek and aggressive. Some sort of shark, or maybe a swordfish. You do not want to select the yellow boxfish as Mercedes did with the 2006 Bionic concept. This was all done with very noble aims – it was believed that the squat little tropical aquarium staple was one of the more aerodynamic members of the fish kingdom, and indeed, the Bionic had a quoted drag coefficient of just 0.19. Unfortunately, it also looked… well, like a yellow boxfish. Sorry little guy, but you’re not winning any subaquatic beauty contests. Maybach Exelero Maybach Exelero Mercedes’ noughties attempt to revive the long-dormant Maybach brand as an ultra-luxe Rolls-Royce rival gave us the 57 and 62, essentially gussied-up S-Classes best remembered today for their absolutely staggering depreciation. It also gave us the Exelero concept, a vast V12-powered luxury grand tourer. Sounds great on paper, but in reality, it was an ill-proportioned exercise in vulgarity and chintz that looked like something dreamt up for the villain in a forgettable sub-Bond spy thriller to drive. BMW ICE It’s all the rage to give BMW’s current styling direction a kicking, but it’s easy to forget that 20 years ago, the so-called ‘flame surfacing’ introduced under Chris Bangle was an equally big target for media jibes. A lot of that was unfair in hindsight, but not when it was aimed at the ICE, which stood for ‘Integrated Concept Engineering’. Catchy. Based on the X5’s platform, it swapped out the SUV body for a big, slightly-melted looking jacked-up two-door coupe. Although built in 2004, the ICE was perhaps wisely never originally shown off to the public, eventually being revealed by BMW’s Classic division in 2021. Still, at least daft sloping-roofed SUVs wouldn’t be something we’d need to worry about making production. Oh. Dodge Super 8 Dodge Super 8 We have no issues whatsoever with the idea behind the 2001 Dodge Super 8. A big, muscly rear-drive saloon with one of the company’s beloved Hemi V8s up front? Lovely. No, it was the execution of the styling where the Super 8 fell down. Retro styling was all the rage around this time, and while some cars pulled it off superbly, this, erm, didn’t. The wraparound windscreen and big side strakes were supposed to be callbacks to the 1950s golden age of American car design, but just ended up making it look bizarre and a bit sorry for itself. Lagonda LUV Lagonda LUV 2009’s V12-powered Lagonda LUV foreshadowed both Aston Martin’s desire to build an SUV and its ill-fated plan to revive the Lagonda marque as a builder of upscale luxury cars. The SUV we eventually got, the DBX, isn’t exactly an exercise in restraint, but it looks downright tasteful next to the gopping LUV, which is somehow blocky and bulbous at the same time. We’re delighted that the car that did eventually mark Lagonda’s brief return, the Taraf, ended up being a much more suave saloon. Maserati Buran Maserati Buran There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a practical, space-efficient people carrier. In fact, we think it’s a genre of car that’s due a comeback given its obvious superiority to the SUV as family transport. However, we really don’t think it’s the sort of car Maserati of all companies should be thinking about. It was in 2000, though, when it debuted the Buran concept, complete with sliding rear doors. We can’t imagine anyone calling this thing pretty or elegant, which makes it all the more surprising that it was penned by one of car design’s GOATs, Giorgetto Giugiaro. Still, it did have all-wheel drive and the 365bhp twin-turbo V8 from the 3200GT, which sounds amusing if nothing else. Honda UniBox Honda UniBox What the heck is this? Is it even a car? It barely qualifies – it was intended to be driven with a joystick, for goodness sake. This 2001 Honda concept brought some genuinely clever thinking to the table, like a highly modular interior with lots of clever storage solutions, but it was all completely overshadowed by the facts that it looked like it had fallen off the Pompidou Centre and that everyone would be able to see what trousers you were wearing. Next. Nissan Nails Nissan Nails This 2001 concept pickup was described by Nissan as showing off “new, flexible ways of using vehicles as ‘a tool for communicating with friends’.” Only problem is, we’re not sure you’d have any friends to communicate with if you drove it. Looking like a Daihatsu Midget has crashed into a children’s soft

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Chelsea are into the selling phase of their summer, and while there’s a lot of talk about some of the potential departures (Nicolas Jackson, Renato Veiga, Axel Disasi), others are really in worrying limbo. Armando Broja has been in that category. Constant injuries have ruined a promising career, and hampered him again on loan at

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