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A Flying Renault 4: The AIR4 eVTOL by The Arsenale

This is the Renault AIR4 it’s a new eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft that took its design inspiration from the legendary Renault 4 – an affordable French passenger car that’s celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

It took the team at The Arsenale just six months between their initial meetings with Renault to rolling out their completed, flight-tested prototype.

Fast Facts – The Renault AIR4 eVTOL

The body of the Renault AIR4 eVTOL will be immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with the classic Renault 4, as the carbon fiber body of the AIR4 is closely based on it to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the model.
The AIR4 has a four electric motors each powering a twin bladed propeller, each propeller creates a maximum of 95 kilograms of thrust, totaling 380 kilograms.
Power is provided by onboard 100 volt lithium-polymer batteries with 22,000 mAh, offering 15 minutes of flight time.
Electric quadcopters are widely considered to be the best hope for autonomous flying cars in the near future, with many companies around the world working on their own designs.

The Renault 4 And The AIR4

The Renault 4 is one of the most important affordable automobiles of its time, over eight million of them were built by the French automaker between 1961 and 1994, a remarkable 33 year production life.

Above Video: This short film shows the AIR4 under development, it then shows it undergoing early test flights to ensure all the systems worked as designed.

In many respects, the Renault 4 was developed as a response to the Citroën 2CV, the 2CV being the most important production car in post-WWII France due to its affordability and its surprising adaptability.

The Renault 4 offered buyers a newer more modern design that was far easier to live with on a day to day basis – particularly for those who lived in cities or towns.

In 1956 when Renault Chairman Pierre Dreyfus launched the project to develop the Renault 4 he specified that it had to be “an everyman’s car,” that would fit the needs of young single people, families, men, women, farmers, and city dwellers.

The final design of the Renault 4 had a short-tailed station wagon body with four doors and a hatchback at the rear. This made it the first mass-produced hatchback in history. Unlike the much simpler and more agricultural 2CV, the 4 had a liquid-cooled four-cylinder engine and a top speed of 65 mph.

Although the original designers of the Renault 4 would immediately recognize this as descended from their original creation, they could never have known that 60 years after they first introduced the model there would be a flying version made.

The Renault 4 is to the French what the Mini is to the British, the Beetle is to the Germans, and the Fiat 500 is to the Italians – an inexpensive little car that somehow became a major pop culture icon.

The Renault AIR4 eVTOL

2021 marked the 60th anniversary of the release of the Renault 4, in order to celebrate it the company approached the team over at The Arsenale and together they came up with a concept for a car that the original designers of the affordable little car could never have envisaged – a flying Renault 4.

Rather than a traditional automobile chassis the AIR4 has an aluminum alloy and carbon fiber chassis that incorporates the central structure, the four arms, and the main 22,000 mAh lithium polymer battery pack.

Lift is provided by four twin-blade propellers, one at each of the arms and powered by its own electric motor producing 95 kilograms (209 lbs) of thrust each for a total of 380 kilograms (838 lbs).

The body of the AIR4 is lightweight carbon fiber, rather than normal doors the entire body is a single piece to keep weight down, and it’s hinged at the front to provide access in and out of the vehicle for the pilot.

The carbon fiber body the AIR4 tilts forward to allow the pilot to enter or exit the vehicle, inside there’s a single lightweight seat.

The AIR4 has a total flying time of 15 minutes and it’s limited to an altitude of 700 meters (2,296 ft). The maximum climb rate is 14 meters per second however this is restricted to 4 meters per second for safety, the maximum rate of descent is 3 meters per second, and the maximum air speed is 85 to 90 km/h (53 to 56 mph).

“A symbol of independence and freedom in carbon-fibre form, the AIR4 is born of the realisation that traffic is compounding, lives are grinding to a halt, but the world above us is clear. The opportunities are endless. AIR4 claims the air as the new road for enthusiastic drivers.”

“We embrace the notion of nostalgia meeting state-of-the-art technology; a design cocktail which, in the case of the AIR4, has resulted in a truly bespoke reinterpretation of a retro icon with entirely new dynamic capabilities.” – Patrice Meignan, The Arsenale

The AIR4 will be on display at the Atelier Renault on the Champs Elysées in Paris at the end of the year, and it’ll head across the Atlantic in early 2022 to be displayed in Miami and New York.

If you’d like to read more about it you can click here to visit The Arsenale.

This is an original Renault 4, a car that provided mobility to over eight million people around the world since its introduction in 1961. Image courtesy of the Renault Group .

Images courtesy of ©Lionel Koretzky + ©Mathieu César Maeva Giani Marshall

The post A Flying Renault 4: The AIR4 eVTOL by The Arsenale appeared first on Silodrome.

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For Sale: The Dodge Dart Swinger 340 Concept Car From 1969

This is the original Dodge Dart Swinger 340 concept car that was first shown to the world at the 1969 Chicago Auto Show, it was a precursor to the upcoming 1970 Dodge Dart Swinger production car with many styling elements making it onto the final vehicle.

This concept car was off the radar for many years, only resurfacing when it was acquired by Steven Juliano and given a careful restoration back to the condition it was in for the 1969 auto show circuit.

Fast Facts – The Dodge Dart Swinger 340 Concept Car

The Dodge Dart Swinger 340 concept car was developed to showcase styling that would appear on later Dodge production cars, specifically the redesigned Dodge Dart in 1970.
The concept car is powered by the Dodge 340 cubic inch V8 fitted with a 4-barrel carburetor and sending power to the rear wheels via a 4-speed manual transmission.
Interestingly the car was largely designed and built by the Alexander Brothers in Detroit in conjunction with Chrysler, rather than by Chrysler themselves.
The ’69 Swinger 340 concept car vanished for many years before being rediscovered by Steven Juliano and restored, it’s now due to be offered for auction by Mecum in January.

The Dodge Dart And The Swinger

The Dodge Dart was original introduced back in 1959 as a less costly full-sized Dodge, it became a mid-sized car in 1962, and then from 1963 onwards it became a compact car. The Darts that are best remembered now are the V8 two-door performance version of the Dart that became popular in the late 1960s and 1970s.

The styling of the concept car was a sign of things to come with the 1970 Dodge Dart Swinger, with some of the design elements being carried over.

The production Dodge Dart Swinger appeared in 1969 as the two-door hardtop version of the model alongside the Custom, GT, and GTS trim levels. The two-door Dart proved a popular alternative to the more common Mustang and Camaro V8 models.

It’s likely that the 1969 Dodge Dart Swinger 340 concept car was developed to test the waters with the design changes intended for the 1970 model.

The concept car is based on a fourth generation Dodge Dart two-door, it’s been given a series of styling upgrades including a distinctive new front end, a new rear, square Cibie headlights accompanied by inboard fog lamps, a black bucket seat interior, an elevated hood scoop, hood hold-down pins, Ansen Sprint slotted aluminum wheels, and the wipers were deleted for a cleaner look.

The Alexander Brothers in Detroit

Much of the design and all of the construction of the Dart Swinger 340 concept car was handled by the famous Alexander Brothers in Detroit made up of Mike and Larry Alexander – two brothers who studied automobile body and fender work at a trade school thanks to the GI Bill.

The interior was largely the same as the production Dart Swinger, with black bucket seats, a wood-rimmed steering wheel, and a Hurst shifter atop a 4-speed transmission.

Mike and Larry started out doing repair work on cars in their father’s one-car garage however by 1957 they realized they had enough work coming in to sustain themselves as a business, and so they set up the Alexander Brothers Custom Shop in Detroit.

Between 1957 and 1969 over 60 custom cars rolled out of the Alexander Brothers shop, many of them were highly influential and the Dodge Dart Swinger must have been one of the final cars out of their garage before they shutdown due to a planned highway through the area.

The Dodge Dart Swinger 340 Concept Car

The Dodge Dart Swinger 340 concept car is now due to be offered for auction in January in immaculately restored condition.

Great care was taken to get the Maroon Metallic paintwork and the black tail stripe correct as per the original design, and it’s powered by the original 340 cubic inch V8 mated to the correct 4-speed manual transmission with a Hurst shifter.

If you’d like to read more about this unusual Dart of register to bid you can click here to visit the listing.

Images courtesy of Mecum

The post For Sale: The Dodge Dart Swinger 340 Concept Car From 1969 appeared first on Silodrome.

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mensfactory: Hennessey Venom F5
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The Spectre Type 10 – A 230 RWHP Mid-Engined Mini Supercar

The Spectre Type 10 is a Mini that’s been completely rebuilt into a 230 hp, mid-engined, rear-wheel drive miniature supercar.

We’ve all seen the remarkable reimagined Porsche 911s that roll out of the Singer workshop in California and the beautiful Eagle E-Types from England – the Spectre Type 10 is essentially what happens when this same philosophy is applied to the classic British Mini.

Fast Facts – The Spectre Type 10

The Mini is a car that has enjoyed enduring popularity since it was first introduced in 1959. It now sits alongside other automotive touchstones like the Jeep, Porsche 911, VW Beetle, Land Rover, Jaguar E-Type, and Mustang as cars that are instantly recognizable even to non-car people.
The Spectre Type 10 is a completely rebuilt classic Mini with a new rear subframe holding a 230+ rwhp Honda VTEC K20 engine powering the rear wheels.
Great care was taken during the development and engineering phases the keep the exterior styling of the Mini as close to stock as possible – including the use of 10 inch wheels front and back.
The first production run of the Spectre Type 10 will include just 10 cars, each with a $180,000 USD price tag and an options list that allows each owner to have the car tailored to them personally.

The Spectre Type 10 – A Mid-Engined Mini From Canada

There can be little doubt that the Spectre Type 10 is the most remarkable Mini in low-volume production today. The company’s Creative Director is Marco Lii, an Emmy award-winning animator who approached the interior design of the Type 10 with a blank slate. The results are unlike any other car on the road.

The rear-mounted Honda VTEC K20 engine sends 230+ bhp to the rear wheels, making this Mini considerably faster than even the most ambitiously tuned classic Mini Cooper S.

The team behind the Type 10 are all life-long fans of the original Mini, and so early on in the design phase they opted to keep the exterior of the car looking as close to stock as possible.

The only major clues as to what lies beneath are the air intake on the left side above the rear wheel arch and the new tailgate that now includes a grille with twin exhausts exiting out either side.

Far from being a standard shoehorn engine swap, the Type 10 is almost an entirely new bespoke car. As much of the original Mini unibody shell as possible is kept, however the completed vehicle features entirely new suspension, brakes, and wheels, with a new engine, transmission, and differential, an all new interior, and a new rear subframe with an integrated roll cage.

Spectre Type 10 – Design + Specifications

The original Mini is famous for its front-mounted four-cylinder engine with its integrated transmission which is mounted transversely, or sideways, in the front powering the front two wheels. This same fundamental layout is now used by the majority of compact cars in production.

Above Film: This short film is part of the Spectre Insider Series, each episode gives a look into a different aspect of the car. Click here to see the full series on YouTube.

The team at Spectre decided to flip this layout on its head, taking the 2.0 liter Honda VTEC K20 four-cylinder engine and installing it in the rear along with the 6-speed transmission to power the back wheels rather than the front.

This required an understandably vast amount of engineering to get right, new suspension had to be designed from scratch and the whole endeavor was made all the more complex by the decision to keep the original 10 inch wheel size.

Honda’s K20 engine is famous for its reliability, making it an ideal choice in an application like this with an engine bay of limited size. In its current state of tune it’s developing 230 bhp which is sent to the rear wheels via its 6-speed gearbox and limited slip differential.

The radiator and cooling systems are mounted up front, with insulated tubes running back and forth to the engine bay to keep everything cool.

The beautiful interior was designed by Marco Lii using Japanese, Bauhaus, and mid-century modern design influences.

The inside of the Type 10 is entirely unique, Creative Director is Marco Lii explains that he took inspiration “from the Japanese mudroom, the Bauhaus movement, and mid-century modern design.”

The central arm rest, the dashboard, and door-mounted armrests are all carved from solid wood. The floor covering is a tatami-like mat, and the seats are carbon fiber fitted with carefully applied upholstery.

The first comment when many people make when they sit inside a classic Mini for the first time is that it seems more spacious than they expected, this is further enhanced on the Type 10 thanks to the car’s Sky Panel. Essentially a single sheet glass roof that showcases the interior to people on the outside, and showcases the landscape to the people on the inside.

The finished car is unquestionably a Mini and there’s no doubt it would be immediately recognized by its original designer Alec Issigonis. The re-engineering that’s been applied to the car has made it vastly quicker without losing its soul, and the interior is a work of art all on its own.

If you’d like to read more about the Spectre Type 10 or place your order for one of the 10 that are planned to be made you can click here to visit the official website.