The fact that this is unattractive doesn't even matter to me. I just appreciate the hell out of seeing something different. Some day some magical combination of 3d printing of automated textile production may allow us to really play with things and allow an interesting palate, but until then these things should exist…

With the right engine swap and a convertible it would make a nice luxury cruiser?

Dirt cheap RWD Chevy V8 wagon? How is this not more popular than a Miata?

So much potential in Merkur. Except for the name. And the rear wings. I would love to see one built up with some of those more aggressive Euro parts...

I've been hunting around for one after I saw a coupe slide form under my nose, in excellent shape, for 800 bucks because of an alternator. The coupes seem to be the rarer survivors in this case. It would be absurdly easy to turn one of these cheap rwd beauties into something to be proud of and I don't believe that…

A close friend of mine has one and he wouldn't part with it for the world. It performs horribly and the interior is worse than awful. You pay an arm and a leg for this too, but no car enthusiast would ever knock the thing. He's currently looking for another to modify heavily.

Also, said block of text actually obscures other comments by filling up so much space. I don't want to call it "inconsiderate" since it provides so much information, but it sure would be nice if I didn't have to scroll through that mess to read other people's comments because this was piggybacking the top comment.

While it sounds like you certainly know what you're talking about, I have to say that I didn't really enjoy the massive block of Italian text in lieu of a robust English explanation.

Yeah, Mwoodski beat me to it.

I honestly don't really see how having features that will eventually be available on, typically speaking, super-sports cars that I'd never buy would really do the trick for me. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with any form of racing, but I am saying that there is nothing wrong with Nascar.

I don't really like racing to begin with, but this actually made me want to watch Nascar. It still baffles me that it's such a highly watched spectator sport though.

I used to hate Nascar too. In fact, I'm actually more of a luxury cruiser guy than a racing guy any day of the week in any case. That being said, overtaking someone while in what is essentially a series of extremely long turns with a car like that takes more than just finesse. I understand that some people like WRC…

Well, they start 16 14-18k, so I think once they hit the used car market they would become insanely popular very quickly. It would be really wonderful if the U.S. relaxed some of it's car laws in general to allow for cheaper, smaller vehicles like this.

I normally lean more towards luxury cars than super-performance, but it's magnificent to see the return of the Great American Muscle Car.

While I'm a huge Tesla fanboy, I'm delighted to hear that these will actually get built by someone.

These are all good points. I got fined like crazy the last time I turned in a leased car for everything that you can imagine and haven't done it since, but it's worth thinking about. no matter what daily driver I get this year, purchasing something old, fun and reliable that you can fix, like most sbc based goodies,…

As someone with less experience doing transmission work than I'd like to admit, I concur entirely. I'm tired of turning away from whatever I'm doing to use my tablet at a start stop pace.

When they say that they've priced it for the largest possible market, it makes me hope that this will be some bare-bones driving machine sold for dirt cheap and possibly with RWD, like a Camry you won't be as ashamed of. Probably not, but it's something to hope for.

I agree, although Elio doesn't seem entirely stable as a company. I hope Jalopnik keeps an open mind about weird competition in the possible future. One way or another, I think the timing is perfect for some kind of extremely cheap vehicle in the U.S. that would be more akin to a moped than a normal car.

If they offered colors like this via wrap from the factory, I think it would make serious headway.