Chevrolet Mi-ray Concept Seoul Debut

The Chevy Mi-ray - a two-seater hybrid roadster

GM are big in Korea, make no mistake. Well, South Korea, certainly.

So big are Chevrolet in Korea that they rank only behind indigenous makers Kia and Hyundai, and Seoul is GM’s world centre for small cars – think of stuff like the Chevrolet Cruze and Chevrolet Aveo.

So having covered two reveals from Seoul today – the Hyundai Blue2 and the Kia Naimo – it seemed only right to report on GM’s offering at Seoul – the Chevrolet Mi-ray Concept.

The Mi-ray – which means ‘Future’ in Korean – is designed at GM’s Advanced Design Studio in Seoul and is said to pay homage to Chevrolet’s sports car heritage, taking cues from predecessors such as the 1963 Monza SS and 1962 Corvair Super Spyder.

The open body of the Mi-ray is mainly made from carbon fibre with ambient lights built in to lines along the sides. Each rear wing contains a pod for luggage (almost McLaren F1-like) and each corner has a carbon fibre spoiler for extra downforce.

The interior gets seating for two - separated by a long centre console - and lots of chrome and leather to create what GM calls ‘sculptural velocity.’ Instrumentation is by way of a back-projected screen and there are both rear and forward view cameras.

The interesting stuff is under the bonnet – which is behind and beneath the driver – with a 1.5-litre four-cylinder turbocharged engine driving the rear wheels and a pair of 15-kilowatt electric motors doing the front and powered by a 1.6-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery charged through regenerative braking

The two power sources feed through a dual clutch ‘box and it appears the driver can chop and change at will between power sources, using either as it suits or both at once for performance.

All very interesting, but we’d bet the farm it never gets in to production.

By Cars UK