Centralian Advocate, Tuesday, January 7, 2014 — 17

MOTORING

Nissanhints atsportysedanFrom CARSGUIDE.COM.AU

MOTORING WRITER

Karla Pincott

JAPANESE carmaker

Nissan will take the wraps of

a new sports sedan concepton January 13 at Detroitmotor show.

For the moment only ashadowy teaser renderinghas been released as theonly real information aboutthe car.

‘‘The Sport Sedan Con-cept previews a new ener-getic design direction thatamplifies Nissan’s legend-ary approach of applyingsports car principles to asedan,’’ the accompanyingpress statement says some-what unhelpfully.

However, with the ageingMaxima sedan due for amakeover soon, the conceptcould be a pointer to stylingfor its coming facelift.

Particularly since there’ssome resemblance to theNissan Maxima conceptrendering teased at theNissan 360 overview event —especially the sweptbackheadlight design.

Along with the trapezoidgrille on the Sports SedanConcept, we could be seeingthe birth of a new familyface for the Nissan line-up.

However, anything of atrue performance nature isunlikely to make it on to themild-mannered Maximasedan in the showroom.

Nissan is also taking theIDx Freeflow and IDxNismo concepts from Nov-ember’s Tokyo motor showfor a second airing atDetroit, suggesting evenstronger moves towardsgauging the response for apossible production plan.

The final edition of the iconic Volkswagen Kombi, which symbolised the flower-power generation, has finished production in Brazil

End of era as last Kombinetted by safety red tapeMOTORING WRITER

David Burrell

WE farewell Volkswagen’s iconicKombi as the final one rolls off theproduction line.

And so it goes. Another auto-mobile icon fades from view becauseof 21st-century safety regulations.

After 64 years of production, thefinal Volkswagen Kombi rolled offthe production line last week - thisone in Brazil where the morerelaxed safety regulations allowedthe Kombi to continue, and wherethey have been built for the past 56years.

And it travelled a long way. Thevehicle that came to symbolise thecounter-culture around the globestarted out as an idea on paper for

the war-ravaged VW to make somemuch-needed money.

The Kombi is now one of the fewcars in the pantheon of true classics.

More than any other automobile,the VW Kombi is an enduringimage of the flower-power hippieera in the 1960s and of the widersurfing culture across the world.

Cheap, plentiful and able to carrybig loads with ease it was an idealvehicle for a newly mobile, BabyBoomer generation.

The first series Kombi was re-leased for sale in 1950, after itsappearance at the November 1949Geneva Motor Show.

Its heritage goes back to when theBritish Army occupied and ran theVW factory in Wolfsburg,Germany, after the end of WWII.

There are various versions of howthe Kombi came to be, but the mainfacts are agreed.

Needing a vehicle to move partsaround the VW factory, the armycobbled together a strengthenedBeetle chassis, surrounded it withutilitarian panels and created asmall truck.

In 1947 a Dutch VW dealer, BenPons, saw these little trucks whilevisiting to the factory.

He thought that with some im-proved body panels it would make acheap, sturdy and light truck to beused in the rebuilding of the war-torn Europe. He sketched a designfor VW managers and went back toHolland.

Heinz Nordhoff, who was ex-Opel,and been installed by the army to

run VW, took up this idea and madeit happen.

The rest of the story is legend.Kombis have a strong fan base anddevotes of the vehicle have theirown language to describe the‘‘buses’’. Those built between 1950and 1967, are known as split-windowbuses or ‘‘splitties’’ because of thedivided windscreen.

Those built after 1967 have a one-piece screen and are known as thebay window Kombis. Prices forearly models continue to rise, acrossthe world. In Australia models fromthe 1950s can run to $45,000 andabove, particularly the barn-doorversions in good condition.

So if you are in the market for areal classic, buy a Kombi now. Theprice will only rise.

Plan may be Supra

The new Ft Hs concept could succeed the Toyota Supra

Karla Pincott

MANUFACTURERS willdevelop architecture tobuild different cars for eachbrand.

Fans of the long-gone andmuch-mourned ToyotaSupra - and those hoping tosee a successor after its11-year absence - can per-haps take heart in newsthat Toyota and BMW haveconfirmed a deal to jointlyproduce a new sports carplatform.

BMW development chiefH e r b e r t D i e s s t o l dGermany’s FrankfurterAllgemeine Zeitung news-paper the architecturewould spawn two new cars.

‘‘We have agreed on ajoint architecture for asports car,’’ Mr Diess said,however declining to revealmore details about theplatform.

Toyota has previouslypartnered with Subaru toproduce the wildly success-ful Toyota 86/Subaru BRZ,but while they are near-clones, it seems the Toyota/BMW collaboration will fo-cus on ensuring the two

resultant cars are stronglydifferentiated.

‘‘What is important is thatthere will be two differentvehicles that are authenticto the two brands,’’ Mr Diesssaid.

The announcement is notunexpected, following thetwo brands making anagreement in mid-2012 tocollaborate on a range oftechnology - includingweight-saving strategiesand lithium-air batteries -and also consider the poten-tial for a medium-sizedsports car platform.

Toyota is tipped to beunveiling a sports conceptthat could point to a Suprasuccessor at the Detroit

motor show in a couple ofweeks, so it’s possiblethat a production vehicleseeded from the show carcould include the BMWcollaboration.

However the Toyota endof the joint developmentcould also end up wearing aLexus badge.

And Toyota is not the onlyJapanese carmaker part-nering with a Europeanbrand for a sports car.

As we’ve reported pre-viously, Mazda is collaborat-ing with Italy’s Alfa Romeoon a platform that will bethe basis for both the nextMazda MX-5 and AlfaSpider.

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