Nissan’s Hong Kong-based subsidiary Infiniti has built a brand new “heritage inspired” automobile called The Prototype 9.
The company is set to release the single seater electric car inspired by the 1940s.
The design is set to be shown off at the 2017 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance near Monterey, California this week.
The Infiniti Prototype 9 has a 148-horsepower electric motor, with 236 pound-feet of torque, and a 30kWh battery, powers the rear wheels through a single-speed transmission. It can hit 100km/h in under 6 seconds and reach a top speed of 170 km/h.
Infiniti’s senior vice president of global design, Alfonso Albaisa said that the Prototype 9 was “inspired by the fantasy of ‘chancing’ upon an unrecognized race car, hidden away for decades in a barn, deep in the Japanese countryside.”
Alfonso said that he was asked by the then-marketing executive Allyson Witherspoon to picture an old, classic car and then imagine it was an “Infiniti race car” in the 1940s.
“What if we had built a car back in the early days of road racing? What would it look like? The Prototype 9 is from our imagination of that car,” he added.