Why on earth would someone design a speedboat inspired from the Audi R8? Well, if we didn’t know better, we’d say that the catamaran’s designer probably wanted to style cars but instead ended up in the shipping business as the R8 Catamaran is Bo Zolland’s second automobile-inspired speedboat after the 1963 Corvette Stingray lookalike catamaran According to the Swedish designer, the 8.8 meter long R8 speedboat has been designed to use a V10 biodiesel marine engine or two smaller 320 HP diesel units helping it to achieve a theoretical top speed of 110 MPH. Continued

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It’s only been a week since Porsche released a teaser image of its forthcoming Panamera partially revealing the vehicle’s front-end but tuners are already preparing to introduce their proposals for the sport sedan. One of the first tuning firms to announce that it is readying a series of performance and styling upgrades for the Panamera is 9ff, a German tuning firm that specializes on Porsche models. Even though the Stuttgart-based automaker has yet to disclose pictures of its new sports sedan, the German tuner released a pair of teaser renderings showing the Panamera equipped with bespoke alloys and from what we gather, a light bodykit that includes side skirts and a rear diffuser with integrated dual exhaust pipes. If you’re wondering how accurate these renderings may be, we reckon they’re pretty close to the real thing.

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It’s been a while since we last heard of South African designer Idries Noah but now he’s back, this time with a new design proposition called the Lotus Europa i6. According to Idries, the Europa i6 concept study is a mid-engined, rear wheel drive sports car inspired in terms of design by the classic Europa and Elite as well as by the latest Lotus models. The independent designer supports that ideally, the Europa i6 would weigh in at about 2,030 lbs (920 kg) with power coming from a 2.0-liter supercharged inline six-cylinder engine.

In theory, he says that the sports car would sprint from zero to 100 km/h (62mph) in 7 sec (someone’s being rather modest…) and on to a top speed of 165 mph or 265 km/h. Leaving aside the theoretical technical specs, Idries’ take on a compact mid-engined Lotus sports coupe hits the spot. Too bad it exists only in the digital world.

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The 5th edition of Peugeot’s well-known Design Competition that was launched at the Beijing Motor Show on 20 April 2008 has entered its second phase with the release of the 29 projects (out of a total of 2,500) that made it the final round. You may wonder why 29 and not 30 projects as said in the title of the article. Well, although Peugeot supported in a previous press release that 30 design projects will make it the final round, we ‘only’ found 29 finalists at the dedicated minisite.

And while that may be an innocent ‘typo’, someone at Peugeot should take a look at the minisite since there seems to be some sort of problem as several design projects like the 1009 Concept from Edwin van der Mark and the Ego from Emre Yazici aren’t visible –we tried more than one browser without any luck. In any case, the next phase of the design competition will take place on September 16 with the announcement of the ten finalists selected by the jury.

On October 2, on the Peugeot stand at the Paris Motor Show, the French automaker will announce the name of the winning designer who will see his proposition produced in a 1:1 scale model and shown to the public in April 2009, at the Shanghai Motor Show in China. See photos after the jump Continued

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 Looks like the Datsun XLink concept that was created by Benjamin Nawka at Nissan’s Yulon Design Center  has given birth to a newly found interest for the long-gone Japanese brand. This modern interpretation of the iconic Datsun 240Z / Fairlady Z of the 1970s is the work of a Polish designer Jacek Kolodziejczyk who goes by the alias ‘Iacoski. The Fairlady Z Concept study combines the classic lines of the original 240Z with several design elements from the new Nissan GT-R such as the front grille, the side air vents and the headlamps. And while it may never go into production, the end result is pretty dang cool.

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A Slovenian website called Avtomanija has published a group of photos of what seems to be a prototype version of the forthcoming McLaren F2 supercar that’s scheduled to be launched in late 2010. Of course, it goes without saying that these photos could be the work of a photoshop artist so don’t be hasty to draw a conclusion on the car’s appearance based on what you see here. McLaren’s new pure-bred two-seater will be based on the P8 mid-engined supercar project that was initially co-developed by the British automaker and Mercedes-Benz as a smaller and lower-priced successor to the SLR but was abandoned by the Germans in 2004. While details are still scarce, it is rumored said that the F2 will be equipped with a mid-mounted V8 powerplant from Mercedes-Benz’s AMG division. See photos after the jump Continued

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Love it or loathe it, this is Pininfarina’s latest creation that is based on the Rolls-Royce Drophead Coupe. Although we’d like to see the Hyperion in real life before we make any conclusions, we must say that these official renderings make us wonder if Pininfarina has lost its touch. In any case, the Hyperion which was created as a one-off for an unnamed wealthy car collector, will make its official debut the Concours d’Elegance classic car show at Pebble Beach in California on August 17th. Pininfarina hasn’t released any details yet, but expect the Hyperion to use the same 6.75-litre V12 engine as the Rolls-Royce Drophead Coupe.

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