The roofless, edgy-looking two-seater you're looking at could represent a new, carbon-neutral future for the British sports car.It's called the Concept Climax, it's been designed by two graduates from Coventry University, and it's ethanol powered, which means it can be run on fuel entirely generated from biomass.Inspired by the original Cooper Climax F1 car of the 1950's, the Concept Climax has been designed to offer a focused driving experience for the "discerning enthusiast" whilst still achieving environmental credibility. Managing Director of Concept Climax Ltd, Simon Long, claims that the company wished to "bring Coventry back into the limelight by re-inventing the British Sports Car", and specifically making it great to drive, affordable and environmentally friendly.For now the car is simply for show, but Concept Climax Ltd has been working on plan to put it into low volume production. Unfortunately, it seems the exhorbitant costs that low volume British sports car manufacturers suffer with are already jeopardising that goal. Originally intended to be an eco-friendly £30,000 roadster, the company now predicts that, with the additional costs of manufacture that it had hitherto not considered, the Climax will cost around £80,000. In other words, it's gone up from the price of a Lotus Elise to that of a Porsche 911 GT3.However, expensive or otherwise, the Climax could still make production as a 300bhp, Brit-built, carbon-neutral performance car. Many will dismiss it as an overpriced irrelevance, but they'll be wrong to do so, because this car is further proof that performance cars needn't be an enemy of the climate.
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