COPPIN’ ATTITUDE
Motor Trend
October 2008
With all the dire news coming out of the Detroit Three these days, it's unimaginable that thinking people with money would contemplate blowing it on the launch of a new car company, but that's exactly what's happening down in Atlanta. An impressive team of auto-execs with private backing is readying plans for a diesel-powered, aluminum-intensive full-size sedan. Naturally it will meet or exceed all safety standards and be priced competitively. No doubt, driving it will cure baldness, prevent cancer, and perhaps foster world peace.
Clearly an investor scam, right? Dr has Carbon Motors Corporation discovered some secret Detroit missed? Chief development officer Trevor Rudderham, an ex-Ford product-planning director, makes a convincing argument for the latter. Carbon's sedan is being optimized for-and will be sold exclusively to-Iaw enforcement and homeland-security agencies, a market Carbon pegs at 75,000 annual U.S. sales. With Ford threatening to cancel the now fleet-only Crown Vic in 2010, the timing seems propitious.
Police are enthusiastic, with over 1200 having joined the company's Carbon Council to suggest features and design elements to make the cars safer and more ergonomic (half of all officer injuries occur in or around the vehicle). By designing the dash to incorporate a large touch screen and the controls for all lights and sirens, there's no need for a laptop to block the AC vents and the passenger airbag. This integration ensures that the crash safety measured in government tests is preserved, which can't be guaranteed in retrofitted cop cars. The rear structure will also absorb a 75-mph impact.
Carbon envisions other cool technologies, too, like cameras that automatically locate, read, and run license-plate numbers while in pursuit, displaying results safely on a head-up display. Other cameras will record 360-degree images around the vehicle and keep an eye on the suspect in the back seat. Shoving an uncooperative perp into the back will be considerably easier through the rear-hinged, 90-degree-opening rear doors, and if he pukes (or worse) back there, it can be hosed out. Another ergo-improvement: Since occupancy is generally limited to one officer and one suspect the cockpit divider is biased to provide more front-seat travel on the driver side, more rear legroom on the passenger side.
Carbon's cost-competitiveness claims factor-in the equipment upfitting and end-of life decommissioning costs, which it claims can run as high as $80,000. Carbon's E7 sedan will be turn-key and delivered in color with graphics and all equipment mounted. At the end of the car's life, Carbon will retrieve it for reconditioning, dismantling for parts, or recycling. None will ever reach civilian hands, so nobody can impersonate a cop. Extensive use of plastics and aluminum should hold the weight to 4000 pounds. The spaceframe, which Lotus Engineering is helping develop, will use many available extrusions, with multiple bolt-or crushable elements for cheaper accident repair. Exposed push-bars front and rear and energy-absorbing plastics at the corners under the cheap-to-tool) thermoplastic outer panels mean Pursuit Intervention Techniques like bump-'n'-spin should result in minimal damage.
The powertrain supplier hasn't been announced, but it's believed to be BMW's BluePerformance 3.G-liter twin-turbodiesel six, tuned to near 300 horsepower and 425 pound-feet of torque. Backed by a six-speed auto, it's projected to hit 60 mph in 6.5 seconds, and with sleek aerodynamics (emergency lighting is integrated into the bodywork), EPA fuel economy should improve by 30 percent (per-shift fuel use may be even better, as diesels idle far more efficiently than gas V-8s).
The concept prototype will make its debut shortly, and if a few more fools part with enough money, the E7 could be menacing rearview mirrors in three years.
