Gordon Murray could hardly have chosen a better first application for his iStream superlight car-making process than a tiny yet spacious coupé.

No chassis design better delivers rigidity while saving weight and especially space. Compared with iStream, conventional spaceframe or box-section chassis forms have cramped interiors and door apertures, less luggage space and a bigger road footprint. 

Gordon Murray to reveal new iStream-based coupé

The fact that the new IGM coupé appears to have unusually large doors and windows, normally threatening to rigidity, will hardly matter in a car whose rigidity is delivered by composite panels bonded to tubular chassis 'foundations' made, in this case, of aluminium. It sounds simple, iStream, but that doesn’t stop it being revolutionary.

Many of this coupé’s first principles had an early application in the Yamaha Sports Ride concept that Murray produced for the Japanese bike and organ company to show at the Tokyo motor show a couple of years ago. There has been no sign of progress since, but it’ll be fascinating to see if Yamaha ever follows through on its avowed plan to build little cars in Europe for Europeans, how much they’ll have been influenced by Murray and his rule-breaking process.

Related stories: 

McLaren F1 review 

Abarth 595 Competizione review