New dance for SEAT at Frankfurt Motor Show

The international design community is eagerly waiting for the Frankfurt Motor Show where an ocean of new designs is expected to flood the huge halls hosting the largest and least human friendly motor show.

The SEAT exhibit will certainly attract everybody curious to see the show car everybody expected to see in Geneva but was not presented by superior orders.

The SEAT design team led by Italian Walter De Silva has impressed in the recent past with their works and everybody is wondering what is up Seat's sleeves that they wanted to keep for the all-important Frankfurt Show.

Well, we have not seen the car yet but we have learned that is something much smaller than the previous Bolero and Salsa.

What we are talking about is a 3.5 metres long two seater sport car with no roof but a lot of pepper under the front bonnet. Designed by SEAT’s team the show car has reportedly been manufactured by ItalDesign.

Sources close to the project swear that the show car is fantastic and shows an unprecedented build quality. The name of the new car should again be that of a Latin-American dance. Being a small car with a very cosy cockpit, just for two, we can’t think of anything else but 'Tango'.

Giugiaro first car for China revealed

As I anticipated last April, production of the first proprietary All-Chinese automobile is being started in Shenyang at Shenyang the JinBei Automotive plant. Shenyang is the capital city of Liaoning Province in north-eastern China.

The all-new Chinese car is called Zhonghua (Chinese for China) comes as a classic four door notchback of rather conventional design, with accommodation for four to five passengers, is 4880 mm long, and has been designed in Italy under the direction of Giorgetto Giugiaro of Italdesign-Giugiaro.

The Zhonghua is reported to have a potential maximum speed of 190 km/h with fuel consumption of 6.5 litres per 100 kilometres and it should be priced at US$ 18,115 and US$ 30,193. First deliveries are expected to start late this year.

As previously reported, BMW AG and Brilliance China Automotive Holdings have recently signed In Shangai, PRC, a “Technical Support Agreement” that grants the Chinese holding consulting technical services from BMW. BMW is to help with its experts to launch the production of the Zhonghua that was expected to go on sale in July this year. This is regarded as a first qualified step into China by the Bavarian group.

The Italian design and engineering house has also consulted with their client to engineer the entire bodywork, from body engineering to prototypes for structural testing as well as on board electric and electronic systems.

Before actually working on the limousine, Italdesign was contracted in 1997 by with China Automotive Company, Ltd. (CAC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Brilliance Holdings, to design a full size Multi Purpose Vehicle still under development. Brilliance Holdings currently dominates the Chinese market with a minibus built on license from Toyota.