New Concept Car out for a spin

Thursday, 2nd April 2009 by

This is the Quaranta, probably one of the least likely cars you'd ever expect to find on Street View - as it's the only one of its kind in existence!

The "Quaranta" (Italian for "Forty"), is the latest concept from Italdesign Giugiaro who specialise in prototyping next-generation cars, and have designed everything from Bugattis and Ferarris to Volkswagen Golfs and Fiat Unos.

It would hardly be a concept car without an airplane-cockpit style seating arrangement, but this one also has a solar-panelled roof and a hybrid engine. The manufacturer claims that it can do 0-60 in around 4 seconds, with a top speed of 155mph. If this is true, it would make the Quaranta the fastest hybrid car in the world.

Of course the Quaranta isn't just out for a quick spin - immediately behind it we find a whole truck full of production crew and camera-men! Presumably the truck is about to overtake the car to capture some footage, but we can't tell what they were filming for.

Perhaps there's one clue however - does anyone else thinks the driver looks a bit like Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond?

There's tons of detailed pictures of the Quaranta on Flickr or a video about its design (in Italian) on Youtube.