"78" Glastron Sportster, Caution Plate on 2040-parts.com

Japan's concept cars - the craziest of the noughties

By Alex Michaelides Motor Shows 19 August 2009 10:00 Here we are, celebrating the best cars that Japan has produced, but what about the ones it hasn’t? At many motor shows – and particularly ones in its back yard – the Japanese industry serves up some wild concept cars which boggle the brain and tickle the ribs. It’s hardly surprising that few of them hit the mainstream.

Try a prestige car from Europcar before you buy. Or you could just go to a dealer.

You can hire a BMW 5-Series (pictured) from Europcar before you buy It’s always good to have a promotion to get punters through the door, but the latest PR promo from Hertz does seem to have a very visible flaw in its logic. According to Europcar – the leading car hire company in Europe, don’t you know – the best route for trying out a new prestige car before you buy is to give them a call and book a day or three in the cars of your choice. Europcar say you can have anything from a 4×4 to a luxury saloon and performance cars, with the suggestion you can pit a Mercedes SLK against an Audi TTS or check out the differences between a new E-Class or new 5-Series.

Maserati GranCabrio MC, Maserati Levante & Maserati Ghibli: Paris 2012

Maserati has revealed the GranCabrio MC at Paris 2012 and revealed new names joining the current Maserati line-up – Levante & Ghibli. The GranCabrio MC is, more or less, the open-topped version of the GranTurismo MC Stradale and gets the same powertrain setup, with a 453hp, 4.7 litre V8 with 520NM of torque. But it doesn’t get the automated manual of the  GranTurismo MC and instead gets a more ‘comfortable’ regular auto ‘box.