back to article Sexy Namir sportster to rewrite fuel economy rulebook?

Frazer-Nash is a name usually associated with British sports cars of the 1950s, so it came as something of a surprise to find the moniker sitting on something that looks like... well... this: Namir Frazer-Nash/Gigiaro's Namir: striking The Namir – meaning 'tiger' - is a joint development between Frazer-Nash Research and …

COMMENTS

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  1. Code Monkey

    Schwing!

    The car's a looker too.

  2. bogwoppit

    Is it just me?

    Or did they turn a boat upside down and paint it orange?

  3. Matt
    Thumb Up

    fuel econonmy?

    who cares, not me! that thing looks pretty damn awesome and if I could afford one, I wouldnt be overly bothered if it ony did 5mpg!

    Im still not sure on all this electric nonsense, I had a hybrid Lexus RX? drive away as i was standing about, the noise, or lack of is eerie... I like my super cars to have a wail... borne of thousands of components, all meticulously put together by artisans, erupting in a symphony of pure extravagance!

  4. Nigel Callaghan
    Thumb Up

    Interesting....

    ...but with an absence of wingmirrors and back windows, how does the driver see who she's just forced into a ditch? (I assume the lady standing by the car is the owner)

    If the fuel consumption is true though, I look forward to buying one second-hand in about 20 years! (and does it come in black?)

  5. Evil_Medic
    Boffin

    Nice! Soooooooo...

    No visible mirrors and no real rear windscreen. The most exciting thing about this car would be safely backing from one's driveway and changing lanes without sideswipes.

    That said, however: a beautiful machine-doubly so if the efficiency and performance is as advertised.

    Yeah, concept machines, prototypes, etc.

  6. Nathan Billett
    Thumb Up

    Want it...

    ...and the totty too,

    That is all :|

  7. Daniel Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    110mpg

    ...and if it is shown to be true, there'll be a mysterious 'disappearance' or two amongst the directors, a couple of key scientists will either defect or reveal that "oops, we misplaced a decimal point; should have been 11.0mpg" and the whole thing will somehow never actually make it to market.

    Not that Big Oil will have had anything to do with it, of course not. That's crazy talk.

  8. LINCARD1000
    Go

    Calling Satan...

    One soul for sale.

    GIMME GIMME GIMME!! O_O Do want.

    I don't care if you have to feed this thing kittens, puppy-dogs or babies to make it go...

  9. Mike Taylor

    Premature discharge

    Or did a capacitor prematurely discharge, causing the model in the third picture to get frizzy with it?

  10. Phil
    Coat

    Um...

    What happened to the girl's hair in the last photo? Did she touch something electrical?

  11. Chris
    Go

    Fast AND economical

    If they actually made a sensible car, it might bring some jobs back to this country and put England back up there in cars like it used to be. Fast AND economical...why not make a sensible-ish car that people can buy and fill this country with car-making jobs once again. In this time, jobs and good but money saving cars are win win win

  12. FlatSpot
    Thumb Up

    More importantly

    More importantly how does the glam chick go from straight hair to curly hair in the time it takes the car to rotate? Women of the world need to know! and us poor guys who have to sit around waiting...

  13. John Greenwood
    Joke

    Hell-low!

    [quote]so it came as something of a surprise to find the moniker sitting on something that looks like... well... this:[/quote]

    Have you got any more details about Moniker?

  14. John Macintyre

    @Nigel Callaghan

    er.. it looks like a car show, so that would car show hotty, not the owner. Car show's = hotty centrally, gets more notice that way. You can always tell the effort a company is putting by the 'staff' on the stand...

  15. John Macintyre

    @ FlatSpot/Mike/Phil

    Don't think it's rotating, the person taking the piccies just moved (check the background between the first two). I'm guessing moniker in pic 3 is another moniker, but i'm happy to take both, i'm not fussy. the Brunette in the background of the third one in the same top would make it all the more fun...

  16. Dave
    Flame

    @Engine

    "rotary engines hardly being renowned for their fuel sipping properties"

    What kind of rotary engine are you basing that comment on? The old Wankel design, or the even older Gnome design?

    From the reference to it being endothermic you should probably consider it being some variation on the Stirling engine.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Has moniker got a phone number?

    and is she free tonight.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Ladies and hair

    Because its a different lass in the pictures.

  19. Sam

    Promising

    It looks like hybrid with fixed and optimal generating is the way to go...assuming those figures hold up.

  20. Steven Jones

    Odd stuff

    First of all, what on earth is an "endothermic" engine. That adjective is usually used to describe a chemical reaction that absorbs heat (as opposed to exothermic). It would be a very odd type of internal combustion engine that was "endothermic". There is an alternative use of the adjective to do with describing organisms that generate heat to maintain body temperature. It's clearly just marketing rubbish as it just sounds vaguely exciting.

    As for the 110mpg, then that's clearly infeasible. What I suspect is that you'll get something like 25km out of a fully charged battery and then maybe 14km out of the first litre of fuel (numbers very, but plug in your own estimates). That would give a long term average of about 39mpg (probably still optimistic). The strange phrasing guaranteeing "fuel autonomy" gives the game away that this is just some artificial scenario that they've conjured from the air.

    You are also not going to be able to sustain that top speed very long. There is no way that an 800cc rotary engine and generator will generate 270KW of electrical. I suspect the rotary engine has been chosen primarily because it is compact for its specific power output, but this is no car to be doing 400km on an Autobahn at top speed.

    In summary, another expensive toy for the well-heeled that is of virtually no practical use to the vast majority of road users. The best that can be said is that it makes for a test bed for some technologies.

  21. Jared Vanderbilt
    Paris Hilton

    $10m for the first copy.

    Not me of course. The Auto X Prize crowd.

    http://www.xprize.org/news/automotive-x-prize-seeks-100-mpg-car

    That should be enough dowry to get the first maiden onto the track.

    Paris: She knows how to utilize battery driven devices.

  22. Michael O'Malley

    Beautiful

    What a pity that silly car got in the way of a proper close up of her.

  23. GrahamT
    Boffin

    Rotary engine capacity

    I seem to remember that rotary engines are considered the equivalent of a piston engine of 3 times their capacity (for a 3 node rotor) so this would appear to equate to a 2.5 litre straight 4. That should be capable of generating 270-300Kw at it's optimum speed.

    Whether it can do that all day at high speeds and still return 110mpg is very doubtful though. I would guess that it only uses 1 litre for the first 39km on a fully charged battery, then starts drinking petrol like the BOFH drinks beer on a Friday lunchtime.

    I would expect it uses TV cameras for the rear view. Mirrors are so last millenium.

    Very nice looking car though.

  24. Parax
    Alert

    @Dave

    If its good enough for NASA why not us too.. free piston stirling engines are under test to see if they should be used on the next mars rovers... it looks promising!

    Actually isn't Dean Kamen (yes Mr segway) building a Stirling powered car???I'm sure I heard a rumor...

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