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Concept Car of the Week: Chevrolet Express (1987)

A fantastic selection of concept cars from the ‘80s were featured in Back to the Future II such as the Pontiac Pursuit, the Ford Probe or the Saab EV-1, but my personal favorite was the Chevrolet Express that almost ran over Marty upon his arrival in the year 2015. Before being a movie extra, the Express was presented in 1987 as another attempt from GM to adapt aircraft engineering to automotive requirements. GM had been experimenting with gas turbines for more than 20 years, dating back to the 370hp XP-21 Firebird from 1954, but that concept was quite primitive compared to its younger brother.

VW Design Vision GTI gets 500bhp: Worthersee

The Design Vision GTI is built to show what a Golf built for racing would look like – and perhaps point to future evolutions of VW’s most successful car – and is built on the same MQB platform as the regular GTI. It’s a bit shorter (15mm) than a regular Golf, a chunk wider (71mm) and a lot lower (57mm) which conspires to make the Design Vision GTI much more aggressive looking than its mainstream sibling. Power comes from a 3.0 litre V6 with two turbos – good for 500bhp and 413lb/ft of torque – which is driven to all four wheels through a DSG ‘box and can scoot to 62mph in a supercar-like 3.9 seconds on its way to 186mph.

BMW X1 – first car in the wild!

The new BMW X1 on the road for the first time The X1 is designed to be a proper, compact SUV, aimed at a younger market, with less to spend, than most of BMW’s current offerings. Based on the 1 series platform, this shot seems to look exactly like the concept car (BMW X1 Concept gallery at the end). Not sure about the brown paint job, though.