Kia KND-4 Concept

Kia has chosen April and the Auto Show from Seoul for making public its new SUV concept. The car is called KND –4 and is painted in light green, its colour being very suggestive for its eco-friendly character. Although it is perfectly functional, the SUV will never be a series product in the current shape, this being just a design exercise. But the future off road cars of compact class from KIA will borrow a good part from the elements experimented on the KND –4. The prototype is the first KIA car that speaks about its new vision “Designology”The word describes itself as a happy combination of the bold design with last hour technology and represents a new vision by which Koreans are building their future cars. “KND is a concept that wants to prove the KIA capacity of conceiving and producing sophisticated cars as design and with great technological capability”, wanted to understate one of Kia Motors managers.The concept has four seats and the interior is almost SF. It is dressed in light colours being enhanced by aluminium inserts and “hidden” lights. At the level of equipment, KND 4 could easily enter the IT category. The driver has a lot of road condition info, state of the vehicle, information provided by a series of sensors that “cover” the entire car.KND 4 is monitored with a propeller of 2.2 litter, diesel (with very low level of pollution). The integral traction is insured by the newest KIA transmission system, called Active Torque Transfer (ATT). The system is directing the power of the engine in conditions of loosing traction to the wheels with higher adherence.The name of the KND car comes from the entitling of the design centre of Kia from Korea which has made the project (Kia Namyang Design Centre). The number 4 means that the prototype has full traction.

Koenigsegg CCGT Race Car

A new race car has been created by the Swedish supercar maker Koenigsegg this year, on March 2nd, based on the production CC-model range.The homologated GT1 racer, the CCGT will be presented at the Geneva Show, on March the 3rd.
The Koenigsegg Development team has done a great job by refining the CC into the CCGT. The CCGT engine is based on the Koenigsegg CCX production engine with the superchargers removed but enlarged to 5.0 litre, in order to comply with the ACO and FIA GT1 regulations.
Most manufacturers are trying undergo massive weight saving programs, as the minimum wight allowed for a GTI race car is 1,100kg. Conisdering the fact that the racing CCGT wighs under 1.000 kg - which gives the possibility to place 100 kg of ballast freely within the car structure – Koenigsegg will definetly have an advantage over the competition. On the other hand, the CCGT has pretty short overhands which could be an issue when it comes to generating enough downforce. Still, by further developing the clever and “slippery” design concept of the CC range, Koenigsegg believes they have created a unique package incorporating a surprising amount of down-force combined with a very compact package and optimal weight distribution. The advantage over most of the competition will definately be seen in the future racing combats, since since the CCGT has a short overall length and low overall height, whilst still maintaining adequate track width and length. The reliability of the race engine is expected be exceptional as it is based on the proven strength and durability of the significantly more powerful road car engine.The race engine is being developed in-house in parallel with the production units by Koenigsegg engineers, supported by Anders Hoglund from Cargine engineering and JP Motorsport.

Koenigsegg CCXR

Even though the last thing that spring into mind when thinking about supercars is their environmental friendliness, by following conscientious and forward thinking strategies, Koenigsegg has managed to create the Bio Fuel Powered CCXR - environmentally friendly 1200 with even more spectacular performance than the standard CCX.It is true that the very low and exclusive production volume of Koenigsegg can hardly be considered to have a measurable impact on the Co2 problem that global society is facing, but still it is an impressive statement that even a small and extreme company like Koenigsegg can afford to develop environmentally focussed solutions.The Experienced Koenigsegg Swedish Team of engineers has managed to modify the CCX engine to run on bio ethanol fuel, therefore we can state that this is probably the most eco friendly supersport car in the world. On he other side, we do not know yet how many adversaries will have something in hand to contest its supremacy, knowing the fact that the octane value (way over 100) has increased the value of the car at 1.018hp.Although the Nordic team did not officially reveal what this data will mean on the road (the car has a torque of 1060 nm at 6100 rpm), there is no doubt that the CCXR has the potential to go way under 3 seconds by 100 km/h and to shatter the 400 km /h border. Following the long-term strategy of Koenigsegg, all previous CCXs will have the possibility to be converted by the factory to accept the biofuel option.The CCXR Biofuel upgrade has been developed in-house on the factory’s engine dyno by the skilled technicians at Koenigsegg, led by Christian Koenigsegg, Marco Garver and Anders Hoglund from the Koenigsegg partner company Cargine Engineering.