Here's one I forgot existed:

"phenotyp" (phenotyp) 03/04/2020 at 09:38 • Filed to: concept cars, concept car, ford

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The Ford Cobra 230 ME, from 1986:

From the LA Times: “With wedge-shaped body, the two seat mid-engine Cobra 230 ME concept featured dual rear spoiler wings and large air intakes scoops ahead of the rear wheels. The traversely mounted inline 4-cylinder engine had electronic fuel injection, intercooled turbocharger and pumped out a healthy 230 horses. Top speed was claimed at 130 miles per hour.”

Popular Mechanics said, “If the finished car is quick enough, it might even slip over into the Porsche-Corvette high-performance market.” I’m impressed by their optimism.

The initial design mule. I love seeing old pictures of cars on the turntable.

Definitely a product of its time. Or even, given that it was late ‘86, maybe even a little behind it. But right on with the hair, the jacket, and the hoops.

It was closely related to the GN34 prototype:

Which is sort of like the love child of a 512BB and an Escort EXP, and powered by a Yamaha V6... like a certain other 80s Ford product.

From Bangshift.com:

Out of all of the known mules, there are two actual GN34 vehicles in existence, and both are in Jack Roush’s collection. The red one is an all-wheel-drive version with a Yamaha V6 of some type, and the black car is the 351-powered test mules, both cars using ZF 5-speed manuals. The surviving GN34s are both based off of a 1985 Pantera GTS (if you look carefully around the windshield and door glass, it should appear) with custom tube chassis sections and body shells.

In the end, it came down to money for development, and the Explorer won out. Which was probably the right move, but, still.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > phenotyp 03/04/2020 at 10:07

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Oh, so that’s not a Panther Solo?  Yes, I did forgot about it...

phenotyp > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 03/04/2020 at 10:18

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Beat it by 4 years. Of course, the Fiero beat them both, but was anchored by the Iron Duke.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > phenotyp 03/04/2020 at 10:21

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Was there some sort of Cabal that kept affordable mid-engine cars off the market, or took the ones that were produced off the market?

Toyota MR2 lasted a bit longer, but mostly because Supra was so far up-market.

Fiero got sacrificed to appease the Chevy gods and their chosen one, the Corvette.

Porsche 914 gave way to 924, and a line of 2+2 front-engine coupes.

Fiat X1-9 and Lancia Scorpion/Montecarlo just basically fell off the map of the western hemisphere.

Ford’s Fiero competitor, shown above... didn’t get built... Why? to protect the Mustang’s pushrod, stick axle reputation? To not get in the way of the Ford Probe? It probably didn’t warrant the name Cobra attached to it...

But that 230ME would have been a worthy successor to split off from the SVO Mustang when it ended, and probably would have been more compelling and interesting than even the Merkur XR4Ti... As well as the Thunderbird TurboCoupe and Mercury Cougar XR7

Heck, it could have been sold as a Mercury, when the Capri left the market after 1986, and been a whole lot more interesting than the 91 FWD convertible Capri... I would have LOVED to learn to drive the 230ME even more than my dad’s 3rd Capri. (he had a 76 euro Capri , a 79 Fox-body Capri , and a 91 Aussie Capri at various times... and now an ‘05 Mustang, since Mercury is just a memory.)

What is it about mid-engine cars for real regular people that is such a problem for car companies to produce?

BRING THEM BACK!!!!!

The car world is full of transverse drivetrains, and hybrid options. Now is a PRIME opportunity for efficient mainstream 2-seat performance runabouts at affordable prices. Manufacturing technology can produce TONS of variations in bodywork on modular platforms and drivetrains....

Do It. DO IT.

TheRealBicycleBuck > phenotyp 03/04/2020 at 10:32

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That front end looks very P robish.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > phenotyp 03/04/2020 at 10:33

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If it had the SD4 version of the Iron Duke I think I could live with a 4-cylinder Fiero

phenotyp > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 03/04/2020 at 10:49

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I think the cabal is “the number of people who actually buy them.”

I say this as the former and current owner of 2 of the cars on that list, and hopefully a future owner of more. Maybe if they’d ever been anything more than a weird niche product, they could have had the kind of development effort that they needed to be truly successful. I dunno. The Boxster’s the only exception to this rule— it helped save Porsche when it was drowning in the 90s, but at the time, Porsche didn’t build trucks. So a radical downmarket move from a high-end, specialty carmaker.

But beyond that? Their time has well and truly passed. We can only hope to keep the flame alive.

Here’s a pic of an AW11 (which I still want to own) that I took at Radwood on Saturday :

And one of my old MR2, which I will regret having to sell until I stop breathing:

And my 914, which still lives in Ohio, waiting for me to have a shop, bought in 1996:

And now I have another car with a frunk, which I think illustrates my point:

The best way to do a new little 2-seater is electric.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > phenotyp 03/04/2020 at 11:09

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MR2 had enough sales to survive into the 1990s, where the Yen Exchange Rate killed ALL of the import coupes, and the SUV explosion onto the market killed or hurt even the domestic ones. If they had put a Miata-sized trunk or frunk on that ZZW-30 MR2 Spyder, and optioned the Celica GTS’s 2ZZ engine, w e would have owned THAT for 15 years, instead of an NB Miata for that time.

Fiero’s best sales figures came in 87 and 88, right as the refreshed suspension went in... but GM corporate KILLED the car harder than Cameron Frye killed his dad’s Ferrari. A slow-selling, destined for the ash heap car doesn’t get a suspension upgrade right before that... that was a change in direction from outside Pontiac division management.

As I said... Ford had just dropped SVO, and Capri when they transitioned from 86 to the refreshed aero 87 Mustangs. The Ford Probe came in in 1988, which was purported to be a FWD Mustang until the enthusiast melted down and made Ford divert it. They had Thunderbirds, Cougars, Tempo coupe, Escort coupe and EXP... and Lincoln Mark VII, as well as the imported Sierra as XR4Ti. T hey had PLENTY of coupes that they could have re-arranged that bandwidth to fit a mid-engine coupe somewhere into that lineup... such as with Mercury, as Capri was gone, and Cougar got bigger and more plush.

BMW i3 has potential, but it isn’t a sports car that happens to be an economically efficient runabout. It is just an efficient economy runabout. Actually, I REALLY wish the i8 had been built out of steel, aluminum, and composite, or even just as a sleeker variant of i3... at an affordable price. i8's performance is just about PERFECT for a hybrid sports car under 50 grand. It ISN’T for a car that costs 150 grand.

I can’t justify electric. I live TOO FAR from charging points, in way too variable of a climate. The nearest charging point to me is probably more than 50 miles away.

Everything that Christian Von Koenigsegg said about why Gemera (and Regera also) is a HYBRID, not full-electric, is absolutely valid.

And it applies to cars with 350 horsepower and 35 thousand dollars just as much as it applies to million dollar machines with enough torque to register on seismographs hundreds of miles away.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > phenotyp 03/04/2020 at 11:10

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“Ford Fiero” rolls of the tongue nicely.

Betcha it was intended as a rally car.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > phenotyp 03/04/2020 at 11:16

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BTW... I really enjoy your designs... but being a mid-engined car enthusiast and OWNER... you have gained even more points with me.

Those cars a very cool. I have obligations that don’t allow for a fun car on the side right now... as much as I would love to buy a 986S, 996, something similar.

I am trying to get to that position, but it would be nice to have a NEW car option to consider, rather than a 15- 20+ year old Porsche, which are good... but long since new.

phenotyp > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 03/04/2020 at 11:37

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100% agree. That’s why I bought the i3 ReX. As the just-in-case.

The thing about the i3, and what was possibly the most attractive thing to me, WAS that its chassis was carbon fiber. I still smile every time I open the doors (without a pillar between the front and back seats) and see the ugly weave. A McLaren it ain’t, but it is just as good, if a little less pretty. BMW invested really hard in making mass-produced CF, and it enables so many packaging options.

I’ve bough t 7.5 gallons of gas for it since July 2017, and fully half of that has been burned by me just fucking around with reprogramming the ReX motor, not because I needed to. Granted, I’m not doing road trips with it. If I were driving from Dallas to Galveston every week, I’d still have my E60. But the flexibility afforded by the packaging that CF chassis can provide is unmatched.

When you’re Koenigsegg, you can do what you really want to do. I got a note from Sasha Selipanov on instagram yesterday (we’ve never met, but I’ve been aware of his stuff since his Art Center thesis in 2004), about actually being able to do what you’ve always wanted to do. He’s gotten there, now, and I hope that their next couple years set the bar even higher.

But they’re essentially building proof-of-concepts, with the target market in the 10s. If you can build something that makes 75% of people happy for 75% of their driving, at a price point they can afford, and you can sell 20,000 of them, that’s astounding. And that’s the hardest point. Large-scale composites, affordable solar (I put in a 220 line in the garage and got a $125 charger, so I wasn’t running on 110 and potentially burning the house down) which charges the car for about a quarter a day... Things should be easier for everyone. Which makes it easier to justify a fun, pretty, awesome-handling car that just exists to make you happy.

phenotyp > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 03/04/2020 at 11:54

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I don’t have time for a “fun” car either, which is why I had to sell the MR2, and why I don’t have the 914. The i3 is more fun to drive than just about anything else I could afford, and I take my daughter to school in it every day. It’s just effortless. Effortlessly quick. Safer than anything else I could afford. And I love that it’s a weirdo. I’ve always had the weirdos. From the FC RX-7 to the 914 to the MR2 to the E60s to the i3.

I guess that says... something?

phenotyp > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 03/04/2020 at 11:55

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And thanks! I still try to draw every chance I get. I don’t get enough chances.

15 and counting > phenotyp 03/04/2020 at 11:58

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That last vehicle is butt ugly and it’s electric? No thanks. Every other car you mentioned , awesome Owned a MR2 and have owned and still own Fieros . The last MR2s were too small for me to drive comfortably but are fine cars. The Fiero is a PITA to get in and out of but great fun to drive.

CobraJoe > phenotyp 03/04/2020 at 12:13

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Was there some sort of Cabal that kept affordable mid-engine cars off the market, or took the ones that were produced off the market?

There’s a very narrow window available for a successful 2 seater sports car. It either needs to be cheap and fun for a “I could use a fun second car” type buyer, or it needs to be fast enough to “This is a serious performance car” type buyer.

Considering the high development costs of a MR vehicle, it doesn’t make good economic sense to build either one.

Which sucks.

phenotyp > CobraJoe 03/04/2020 at 12:21

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Yep.

phenotyp > 15 and counting 03/04/2020 at 13:56

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OK, cool, thanks for your input.