Forgotten Idea: Saturn Flextreme The Each day Drive

That is an installment in a sequence of posts trying again on present automobiles that we really feel deserved a little bit extra consideration than they bought. When you have a suggestion for a Forgotten Idea subject, please shoot us a line or depart a remark under.

Saturn Flextreme

First Proven: 2008 Detroit Auto Present

Description: Plug-in hybrid compact automotive

Gross sales Pitch: “Flextreme reveals that unconventional pondering may end up in nice automobiles.”

Extra Forgotten Ideas

Particulars:

First seen on the 2008 Detroit Auto Present, the Saturn Flextreme Idea was a digital clone of the Opel Flextreme Idea which had been unveiled on the 2007 Frankfort Auto Present just a few weeks earlier. The Flextreme idea was a 4-door compact automotive that includes a plug-in serial-hybrid drivetrain just like that launched within the Chevrolet Volt Idea launched on the Detroit Present a yr earlier.

Not like the Volt Idea, which featured a small gasoline engine, the Flextreme was powered by a tiny 1.3-liter diesel. When totally charged, the Flextreme was claimed to journey as much as 34 miles on electrical energy alone, after which the diesel engine took over. Saturn claimed a mixed electrical/diesel vary of 444 miles.

The Flextreme featured center-opening facet doorways which, when opened collectively, created a usefully giant passage to the automotive’s inside. As a substitute of a rear hatch, the Flextreme included a pair of gullwing-style doorways situated on the automotive’s rear bodyside.

For city explorers, a pair of Segway Private Transporters had been saved below the car’s cargo space and could possibly be accessed from exterior of the automotive. No phrase on if the Segway batteries had been charged whereas in storage below the automotive.

Forgotten Idea: Briggs & Stratton Hybrid

CG Says:

The Chevrolet Volt Idea was unveiled to a lot fanfare again in 2007, however the hoopla could have come principally from the motoring press, which appeared to know the E-Flex plug-in hybrid system higher than most people.

When the manufacturing Volt arrived for 2011, public response was lukewarm at finest, as Basic Motors handled public and media skepticism, particularly that from Fox Information. For that reason, Volt variants just like the Opel and Saturn Flextreme by no means matured into full manufacturing fashions. Sadly, the E-Flex idea—which is differ very similar to Nissan’s e-Energy system—by no means noticed life past the Volt, except you depend the short-lived, and extraordinarily uncommon, Cadillac ELR.

Take a look at Drive: 2014 Cadillac ELR

Hearken to the Shopper Information Automotive Stuff Podcast

Follow Tom on Twitter

Saturn Flextreme  Idea Gallery

(Click on under for enlarged photographs)

2014 Chevrolet Volt to be Much less “Surprising”

Automotive Stuff Podcast