LA motor show 2010: Merc's new supercar - more pics

Mercedes-Benz will make waves at this year’s Los Angeles motor show with this spectacular-looking concept called the Biome.

Created at Mercedes-Benz’s advanced design studio in Carlsbad, California, the sleek four-seater hails from the fertile mind of studio head Hubert Lee – the man behind the aggressive new look of the second-generation CLS unveiled at the Paris show and the F800 Style concept car wheeled out at this year’s Geneva show.

See the official pics of Mercedes Biome concept

Don’t expect the Biome to feature on the Mercedes-Benz stand in Los Angeles, though. Word is that Mercedes-Benz’s latest concept, a full-size 1:1 model, will be revealed to the public for the first time at the prizegiving ceremony for the Los Angeles Design Challenge, the competition for which it was originally conceived but for which the German car maker ultimately decided to instead enter two other concepts: the Smart 454 Weight Watch Technology (from its Sindelfingen-based studio in Germany) and Maybach eRikscha (from its Yokahama-based studio in Japan).

The 2010 Los Angeles Design Challenge called for the creation of a safe, comfortable compact 2+2 that weighs no more than 1000lb (454kg). The Biome has been built to these parameters, with what Lee describes as a biofibre body that he says grows in a completely organic environment from seeds sown in a nursery and sees it tip the scales at just 875.5lb (394kg).

See all the entries from the Los Angeles Design Challenge 2010

The 4020mm long, 2500mm wide concept also boasts a diamond-shaped seating arrangement that sites the driver in the middle up front, two passengers slightly further back on either side and a fourth passenger in the middle at the back.

Lee denies the styling of the Biome is related to any upcoming Mercedes-Benz model, describing it as “pure fantasy”.

Greg Kable

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