Pininfarina Metrocubo

The Pininfarina Metrocubo is a hybrid city car concept that Pininfarina introduced at the 1999 Frankfurt Motor Show, about 2.5 metres long yet able to seat up to five people. Its name is Italian for cubic metre. Story Cars credits the design to a team under Ken Okuyama, with Lowie Vermeersch drawing the exterior and Bruno Gho the interior. A four-stroke 505 cc two-cylinder Lombardini petrol engine works as a generator that charges the batteries, and a 35 kW electric motor drives the car, which can run on electricity alone for a limited range. Sources disagree on the total range, so none is stated here. The seats slide on rails in the floor and can be removed, and the front wheels are smaller than the rear ones, using Michelin PAX tyres. Pininfarina built it as a research vehicle rather than a production model. An earlier register listed it with the year 2003; the sources read give 1999.