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Fiat Panda Aria and Grande Punto Abarth SS concepts

By Guy Bird Motor Shows 17 September 2007 02:50 Aria goes green, Abarth gets sporty, 500 goes large… Fiat’s signature white stand featured both ends of the car spectrum: From the eco Panda Aria concept to a new even sportier version of the Grande Punto, the Abarth SS prototype. It arguably had the best show stand gimmick at Frankfurt too – a giant Fiat 500 model the size of a two-storey building housing a monorail on which punters could ride life-size 500 cars around its innards – entered through the giant 500’s wheel arch. Anyway… what about this eco Panda thingy… Oh yes, the Fiat Aria ‘concept’ is subtle like that.

Karmann-Ghia Coupé redesigned by Brazilian students

The winners of the Karmann-Ghia Brazilian student competition to design a modern interpretation of its classic Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia Coupé have been revealed. Over almost 60 years the German-Italian company has become an important supplier of car bodies and tooling in Brazil, but the market has lacked a model carrying the Karmann-Ghia badge since the '70s. The original coupé, which inspired the contest, was launched in Brazil in 1962 and remained in the market for 10 years before it was replaced by the Volkswagen SP – considered the first car completely developed in the country.

SSC Tuatara revealed in Shanghai

Jerod Shelby reveals the SSC Tuatara in Shanghai We finally discovered last month that Shelby Supercars wouldn’t be calling their new Veyron-bashing hypercar the Ultimate Aero II (which seemed logical) but has instead taken a leaf out of Pagani’s ‘Book of obscure names for Supercars’ and decided on SSC Tuatara. Yep, SSC has named their hypercar after the Maori name for a lizard, a lizard with the fastest evolving DNA of any creature (doubtless the motivation for Jerod nicking the name for his car). Interestingly, a comment on the story we ran about the new SSC getting the Tuatara moniker said that as well as having the fastest evolving DNA of any creature, the Tuatara “…puts a tortoise to shame in the slow moving stakes, and is also regarded as a living link to the dinosaurs” which, for Jerod Shelby’s benefit, we should probably gloss over.