Drunk Russians did not design this extremely odd car. Nor did it belong to George Jetson before he rocketed to cartoon fame.

This is the Tango, a real $108,000 electric car built in California – where else? – that's capable of zero to 60 in 4 seconds. You read that right. Four seconds, as in Corvette Z06 and Ferrari F430 territory.

"It is the world's fastest urban transportation device," said Joe Jamrosz, corporate sales manager of Hammacher Schlemmer, the high-end catalog retailer that is selling it. "It is a 120 mph high-performance vehicle that just happens to be electric."

This may come as a shock, but I'm not completely sold on electric cars and their golf-cart genetics. I don't buy all of their whoo-hoo, Hillary-and-Bill benefits. And if I plug my electric car into a socket whose juice is provided by one of TXU's coal-burning generators, how is that zero emissions?

This one, however, is fast enough to blow my Mustang GT into the weeds. Now that's intriguing. I just wish it didn't look like some mutant forklift that fell to Earth – and hit hard.

Nonetheless, this little roothog ingested some good stuff before it shot out of the factory. The seats have racing-style four-point belts with inertia reels. The chassis is stainless steel with a chromium molybdenum roll cage.

The tough body panels are made of carbon fiber, Kevlar and fiberglass. Moreover, 1,000 of the car's 3,000 pounds of weight come from a battery pack beneath the interior floor. As a result, the car has a low center of gravity and good handling.

It has other, stranger attributes as well.

"If there is a UPS truck parked on the street and no space available, you can sneak in behind it," Mr. Jamrosz said. "The length of the car is the width of a UPS truck."

But you can't savor the Tango for long. Like many electric cars, it has a limited range – 40 to 80 miles between recharges.

Hammacher Schlemmer expects most of Tango's sales to come from dense urban areas such as New York, Boston and Chicago, where affluent, fun-loving execs might use one for quick trips around downtown – leaving the Bentley GT in the company garage, I presume.

"We expect to sell just a handful," Mr. Jamrosz said. "It will be people like motorcycle riders who enjoy driving something fun. It is a tiny niche."

So basically, the Tango – whose looks can cause trees to shed their leaves – is the electric car world's Ferrari. That may say it all.

Annons

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June 2010