Rinspeed has been making fast cars like the Porsche 911 faster for 40 years now. To celebrate their 40th anniversary Rinspeed has pulled the tarp off a sweet concept car called the eXasis which is a transparent car allowing you to see the road underneath you as well as ahead of you.

While the eXasis look s like it is made from glass it has a floor made of Makrolon produced by Bayer MaterialScience AG. "Everyone who sees the eXasis for the first time raves about the glass car, but they actually mean our transparent high-tech plastic," says Ian Paterson, the member of the Bayer MaterialScience Board of Management responsible for Innovation, describing the typical reaction to the prototype. "Many people only talk about innovation. We do it, in conjunction with our partners." In fact, nearly all the Bayer MaterialScience business units were involved in the development of the concept car, providing products such as surface coatings and polyurethanes (for molding tools). But it was the plastics experts from BMS with their Makrolon® polycarbonate who were responsible for the transparency of the eXasis. Frank M. Rinderknecht: "In this ethereal transparency, the true spirit of the eXasis becomes visible. An abstract idea becomes material, visions become a tangible car. Yet the eXasis still doesn't seem to have quite arrived in our material world."
The clear body allows a nice view of the cars engine, a 750cc Weber which sits above the sequential shift 6-speed transmission. The tandem driving style along with the Weber engine and sequential shift transmission makes this car seem like it is part motorcycle. The chassis of the eXasis is made from aluminum and the seats are from Recaro. The engine has 150 bhp and is fueled by bioethanol.

Performance from the smallish engine should be quite good considering that he entire vehicle weighs only 750kg (about 1653 pounds). The length is 3700 mm, width is 1960mm, height is 1284mm and the top speed is a claimed 210 km/h (about 130 mph) acceleration from 0-100 km/h is 4.8 seconds (that is 0-62mph). Story and image via Rinspeed.

by Shane McGlaun