Namir: new meaning for a tiger in the tank

After a 50 year holiday from making cars, one of Britain's grand old names has reared back up with a radical take on hybrid power. Frazer-Nash Research came up with one of the Geneva motor show's big attention grabbers with its Giugiaro-designed Namir (that's Arabic for tiger), a two-seater it claims is the world's fastest plug-in hybrid.

The Namir uses a 400V lithium polymer battery pack to power dual brushless DC electric motors -- front and rear -- putting out an aggregate of 270kW. Like the Chevy Volt, it also has a petrol engine powering a top-up generator to extend the car's range. Unlike the Volt, or indeed any other such set up, the engine is a rotary, displacing a tiny 814 cc.

There's no gearbox, but some slick computing monitors road and driving conditions and uses a digital differential to adjust power distribution between front and rear motors, as well as running auxiliary functions like ABS, cruise and ESC control systems. Extensive use of carbon fibre and honeycomb panelling keep the monocoque frame weight down to a tiny 110 kg.

Frazer-Nash says it's the most efficient and fastest plug-in package yet. The figures certainly support that: a claimed 0-100km/h dash time of 3.5 seconds (and 200km/h in 10.4sec) and a top speed of 300 km/h with combined cycle fuel consumption of 2.5L/100km, giving it a range of around 1900 km.

All that and there's 400 litres of boot space -- that's four-fifths of a Commodore boot.

Frazer-Nash was one of those odd little specialist manufacturers occupying the upper echelons of British auto industry alongside the likes of Morgan, TVR, Bristol and Ginetta. Until the late 1950s it made attractive, high-tech and prodigiously powerful sporting machines that cost as much as a Kensington townhouse and sold in numbers guaranteeing the final word in exclusivity. According to the company's Wikipedia entry, it produced just 85 cars between 1948 and 1957. The 1957 Continental, powered by a modified BMW six, went to market with a price tag of £3751. That's easy seven-figure territory in today's language, which perhaps helps explain the total production run of just two.

Although the Geneva Namir is a working prototype, at this point, they're not expecting to produce it in any greater numbers.

Pictures courtesy Salon International de l'Auto