New car news

04 December 2009 - 11:00

Honda P-NUT: cracking

Ah, those crazy Japanese and their amusing acronyms.
 
This is the Honda P-NUT, a futuristic city concept unveiled this week at the LA Auto Show. That’s P-NUT, short for Personal-Neo Urban Transport. Ah, so droll.
 
The P-NUT, says Honda, explores what a city car could look like in 10 to 15 years time, and features a McLaren F1-style three-seater layout with the driver front-and-centre, flanked by a pair of passengers sitting slightly behind.
 
Like the Mitsubishi i, the P-NUT is rear-engined and rear-wheel drive, a configuration that assists its compact packaging. The engine bay has been designed to incorporate a whole range of powertrains, from a conventional small petrol engine through a hybrid system to full electric drive.
 
As you probably guessed, the P-NUT is a genuine blue-sky concept: instead of door mirrors, it gets a single reversing camera, and there’s a distinct lack of, er, anything on the inside. Apart from a Darth-Vader-Tie-Fighter-steering-wheel-thing.
 
Still, we like the P-NUT. It looks mental – the work, incidentally, of Brit designer Andy Foster in Honda’s LA design studio – and it has the face of an Evil Robot Owl.
 
Warning: if swallowed, this product may cause choking.