Lancia J

By Chris Thorp

27th October 2006

It's Doctor Dolittle's dream car - a four-wheeled pushmi-pullyu! This curvy saloon is the Lancia J, a model with half as many body panels as the average four-door thanks to the use of innovative symmetrical styling.

Produced by Italian styling house Fumia Design, the J has identical front and rear bumpers, while the left-hand front door matches the right-side rear door. Our pictures are colour-coded to show which bits are the same. One obvious benefit is that this process halves the design and manufacture costs involved in production. Fumia used a Lancia to show the method can be applied to a sleek, desirable executive saloon. While the J is a 1:4 scale model, a full-size car would be 4.80 metres long and 1.49 metres tall - about the same as a Mercedes E-Class.

The scale model is to be displayed in Tokyo, where the designer hopes it will interest Japanese manufacturers. There are no plans to put the J into production, but the technology involved may appear on future vehicles.