Vad månde bliva av det här??

Detta låg på firmans intranät idag. Säkert en Pressrelease från Lotus Engineering i botten. Vilken tillverkare kan det vara som ska bygga på Alu-profiler?

2005-04-07 Lotus Engineering says a new flexible vehicle architecture could help automakers launch a series of niche cars at a relatively low cost.

The concept is to create castings for each corner of a spaceframe. These corner nodes would be common to all variants, but by varying lengths and angles of the much simpler straight structural pieces connecting the corners, automakers could design multiple vehicles that look much different from each other.

The architecture, made almost entirely from aluminium, is suitable for crossover or supercars, say executives at the automotive engineering consultancy in Norfolk, England, to Automotive News Europe.Lotus says it is developing a version of its Versatile Vehicle Architecture (VVA)for an automaker it declined to identify.

"VVA is most effective for a family of niche vehicles where the combined annual volume is around 50,000 units," says Richard Rackham, the company's senior vehicle architect. "We can vary the length, wheelbase and width of the vehicle."He adds that, in some circumstances, the position of the powertrain elements also can be moved.Consequently, the architecture can help automakers produce niche vehicles without the need to develop expensive new platforms or to make engineering compromises by sharing mainstream platforms.

Ungefär det där läste jag för någon vecka sedan, frågan är bara var...

Det här låter väldigt spännande, och kan öppna för intressanta kreationer inte minst från de småserievänliga engelsmännen.