If it's prototype…… the 1984 Birmingham Motor Show.
That'll do!
This was one of those cars (like the AC 3000ME) with a very long gestation period, so by the time it was actually on sale the impact was lost.
Also the cost for what it was was way too high. Almost no-one was going to pay the fancy price for a 4 cylinder car no matter how well it went. It never ceases to amaze me how little some of the manufacturers of these kind of cars know about the psyche of their potential buyers. I can't remember the price now but it was the equivalent of about £60/70000 today, and for that money buyers expect at the very least a V6 or a V8 engine; Lotus made the same mistake with the Esprit and it never got the buyers such a car deserved then by the time it did get a V8 it was so stale nobody was really interested. Jaguar made the same mistake as well with the XJ220; buyers in that stratospheric marketplace were never going to fork out a quarter of a million pounds for a puny little V6, no matter how fast it was!
But it's something the British motor industry management excelled at: not understanding how to market their cars properly! To me it was perfectly obvious the Americans were never going to buy the Triumph TR7 for instance, with a puny little pea-shooter exhaust sticking out of the back and narrow steel wheels with plastic hub-caps; did they know absolutely nothing?!
Anyway, rant over and you get your point now!
Interesting car.
