Gordon Murray could hardly have chosen a better first application for his iStream superlight car-making process than a tiny yet spacious coupé.
No chassis design better delivers rigidity while saving weight and especially space. Compared with iStream, conventional spaceframe or box-section chassis forms have cramped interiors and door apertures, less luggage space and a bigger road footprint.
Gordon Murray to reveal new iStream-based coupé
The fact that the new IGM coupé appears to have unusually large doors and windows, normally threatening to rigidity, will hardly matter in a car whose rigidity is delivered by composite panels bonded to tubular chassis 'foundations' made, in this case, of aluminium. It sounds simple, iStream, but that doesn’t stop it being revolutionary.
Many of this coupé’s first principles had an early application in the Yamaha Sports Ride concept that Murray produced for the Japanese bike and organ company to show at the Tokyo motor show a couple of years ago. There has been no sign of progress since, but it’ll be fascinating to see if Yamaha ever follows through on its avowed plan to build little cars in Europe for Europeans, how much they’ll have been influenced by Murray and his rule-breaking process.
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Hedonist.
Having a go at other people over, effectively, anonymous forums is how the snivelling little trolls get their fun each day. I'm sure most journalists very quickly learn to ignore them.
BTW, if you think this place is bad, have a look at some of the computer gaming forums...
Oh for crying out loud
Oh for crying out loud Hedonist of course no one's obliged to read it but until you do you don't know what it says. It doesn't have a spoiler announcing "Move along, nothing to see here". We are all hoping that one day Cropley's journalistic instincts will kick in and he will actually winkle something newsworthy out of Murray, a forlorn hope admittedly.
Ok Bob
I'm not just baffled by your comment but by the number of armchair critics that have a pop at Autocar. In this example, it is an Opinion piece - not presenting hard facts - and heaven knows if it it'll actually make it into the magazine. And I repeat, no one is obliged to read it so why fret?
Well paid for it...
My view is that many of the arm chair critics on here are well paid by others in the motor industry to post their critisim online, for example, there is nothing like a good Jaguar/Land Rover article on here to bring the BMW/Mercedes Benz paid shills out in force...