Centralian Advocate, Tuesday, September 17, 2013 — 19

Alice Springs to Adelaide | Adelaide to Alice Springs

WEEKLY SERVICE

RedStarCar Carriers

8256 1299 for a quote

MOTORING

Furai’send aninfernoJeff Glucker

THE Mazda Furai concept

burnt to the ground in the

hands of Top Gear UK.

Mazda unveiled the Furai

concept at the Detroit AutoShow back in 2008.

It wowed crowds, showingthe Nagare design languagethat informed Mazda designin the following years.

But the Furai wasn’t justa pretty concept, as itboasted at 335kW three-rotor set-up and helpedback up the claim thatMazda had produced anactual supercar.

Now that car is a toastedshell, burnt to the groundwhile in the hands of Top

Gear UK.

We’re not sure how thisstory managed to avoidleaking out for so long, butback in 2008 the car was withthe popular televisionshow’s crew and it wound upon fire. There’s been noofficial commentary on howthis happened, as this storyis making its way into 20thanniversary special for theshow’s magazine.

Still, in a world where bitsof news can travel the globein seconds, we’re amazedthat no one knew about thisincident for so long. Mazdaand Top Gear did a prettygood job about keeping thestory quiet. If it happenedtoday, it would’ve wound upon Twitter, Instragram, andFacebook in a matter ofminutes. Seconds, possibly.

Our guess as to how thish a p p e n e d ? J e r e m yClarkson demanding morepower out on the Top Gear

runway, while getting theFurai sideways. From there,it was just a matter of a hotthree-rotor being pushedhard, probably a bit of anoil leak, and then . . .combustion.

Plug into the VWelectric supercarPaul Pottinger

The essence of the Volkswagen XL1 will run tomorrow’s Ups, Polos, Golfs and more

VOLKSWAGEN XL1 points to anew direction in hatch vehicles.

VW limited edition XL1 techwill power future Polo, Golf andUp models.

Look hard at this car. It’s Volks-wagen’s next hatchback. Well,maybe look under the skin. It’s thesubstance of the XL1 rather thanthe outlandish form that we’ll seein VW’s small, affordable passen-ger cars before the calendar flipsto decade three.

While the limited run XL1 is onsale in Europe for some $160,000 tocollectors and the uber green, itsessence will run tomorrow’s Ups,Polos, Golfs and more besides.The trick is to look past the hiplevel height, carbon fibre body,gull wing doors and to see theplug-in electric battery on whichit can run for 50km alone and thetwo-cylinder diesel engine whichstretches the range for a further500.

This combo makes for emissionfree city travel and open roadtravel at some 0.9 litres per 100km,

though it can motor at 160km/h.Hence the company label ‘‘1.0-litrecar’’ – of which the XL1 is theshowroom precursor – refers not tocapacity but range.

Having clambered through theBladerunner doors, you could bein almost any contemporary VW,albeit the brand’s only two seater.The switchgear and most of thedials are from the Golf, the wheelis pure GTI, the gear stick oper-ates a seven speed DSG auto, theremovable Garmin multi-mediascreen is found in the Up.

There’s no mirrors and no needfor them – two rear facing cameras,one mounted in each door elimin-ate blind spots. That should bedisorientating and so it is forabout 30 seconds at which point itreplaces intuition.

That’s also so of the drive. TheXL1 glides as silently as anyelectric vehicle though a good dealmore efficiently than any on theroad with almost on-existent windresistance. Amid the plethora ofinnovation there’s at least onedelightful old world note. Thesteering is purely mechanical, en-

tirely devoid of assistance, justl ike a Lotus or my 1971Kingswood.

Merging onto to the autobahn,the diesel engine is engaged viafinger tip on the Garmin. It chugscrudely but almost immediatelyinto life, ensuring that youneedn’t remain on the inside lanefor long. When our brief test isover, I’m exhilarated in a way thatonly some fast and fabulous carshave made me.

Parked nearby the XL1 atBensburg Castle near Colognethis week, where VW runs a preFrankfurt Show event, is aBugatti Veyron – the outrageous16-cylinder quad turbo supercar.

Haven’t driven one of those.Probably won’t.

But its proximity makes yourealise the XL1 is every bit asmuch a supercar in its own sense.And while it is the single mostexpensive VW in the brand’s near80-year history, its heart andlungs will be part of your and mydriving reality.

Use yourbrains tostart carRichard Read

FORGET fingerprint scanning. Brainwave identification is on the way.

It’s hard out there for a car thief – and it’sgetting harder. Once upon a time, all thebad guys needed to do was find anunlocked vehicle.

Now, they’ve got to fight their way pastkill switches, LoJack devices, and OnStar– not to mention the impending arrival ofdigital licence plates, voice-identification,and fingerprint-recognition.

But all those gadgets pale in compari-son to the latest theft-prevention tool.

According to Mashable, Isao Nakanishiand his colleagues in the graduate schoolof engineering at Japan’s Tottori Uni-versity have developed a prototype for asafety system that uses brain waves toidentity drivers.

The system takes samples of brainwaves from a driver and stores them ina database.

If a vehicle begins moving and thedriver’s brain waves don’t match those onfile, the vehicle is disabled.

The system can also tell if a driver isdrunk or falling a sleep, since brain wavesin those circumstances vary significantlyfrom samples taken when a motorist isfully awake and sober.

Though it’s still in the very early stages,the system is ultimately intended for useon mass transit vehicles or on those thatcarry large sums of money or valuables.

However, we could easily envision a daywhen this technology might roll out tomainstream cars.

Nakanishi’s system still has a few po-tential shortcomings.

For starters, if the goal is to protectbuses and armoured cars, it doesn’t domuch to prevent those vehicles frombeing hijacked, provided the bad guyskeep the approved driver behind thewheel. And in emergency situations, therewould need to be some kind of override toallow unauthorised persons to drivea vehicle.

But ignoring those flaws, what’s mostinteresting about this technology is thefuture it points to, the same future thatincludes Apple’s new fingerprint-recognition software.

It’s a future in which all the accessorieswe know and loathe – keys, wallets, creditcards – become useless.

Or more accurately, they become us, asour own bodies are transformed intopasscodes. Tinfoil-hatters, we’re sorry butthe future isn’t looking so bright.

Embrace Cactus?

Citroen Cactus concept is unveiled at the2013 Frankfurt motor show

HERE’S a smooth newcomer with a spikymission for French carmaker Citroen.

As the manufacturer uses a style-drivenpush in Australia with its DS line, its Cactusconcept is unveiled this week at theFrankfurt motor show to preview thethinking behind a revitalisation of itsmainstream C-Line models.

Citroen believes the design of the Cactuscrossover is the look that will work forpeople who buy cars for transport, althoughit’s not backing away from its aspiring-for-prestige position Down Under.

It’s not as outrageous as some recentsports car dream machines, but it’s not justa boring box.

‘‘The French are renowned for flair andcutting-edge design and that won’t disap-pear. It’s in the DNA,’’ the head of CitroenAustralia, John Startari, tells Carsguide.

‘‘The global strategy concentrates onproduct development and the C-Linerange will be pitched as the more-affordable models.’’

So Startari confirms that Citroen isworking closely with Peugeot in Australia,dovetailing their line-ups with the top endreserved for his DS models, as they workunder the shared ownership of the SimeDarby group.

‘‘That’s to stop cannibalisation in thePSA stable,’’ he says.

Looking closer at the Cactus, Startari sees

potential for Australia, even though theFrankfurt motor show car is revealed withleft-hand drive.

‘‘Citroen has tended to go into productionwith the majority of its concepts, so . . .’’hints Startari.

‘‘It’s too early to determine if it will cometo Australia. But we’ve a hot, dry countryand there is a certain resonance.’’

Among the design work on the Cactus isa ‘driver’s station’ with controls in a fully-digital interface, sofa-style front seats, nat-ural materials and what Citroen calls ‘non-aggressive flowing surfaces’ for the body.

Technology work starts with lightweightbody panels, ‘airbumps’ to protect the body,and a hybrid drivetrain – incorporatingcompressed air and hydraulics – that prom-ises 2.5 litres/100km economy.