Europe's car industry is at the start of a massive nosedive right now. Maybe that's why Peugeot's 680 horsepower diesel Onyx concept is as fuel efficient as a Prius.
Even though it's a low-slung, rear-drive, mid-engined supercar, the Onyx will only sip four liters of fuel for every 100 kilometers it travels. On the European cycle, that's exactly the same as a brand new Prius, which gets 50 mpg combined here in the U.S. of A.
The Peugeot takes off from there, because while your mom's Toyota has a weaksauce 98-horsepower drivetrain, this thing has a 3.7 liter diesel-hybrid V8 sending 600 horsepower to the rear tires. An electric motor sends another 80 horses along, too. This is the same kind of technology Peugeot developed for the 24 Hours of Le Mans to take on Audi's diesel hybrid R18. That's the kind of hybrid tech we can get behind.
With a carbon fiber shell and a six-speed sequential gearbox, the whole car only weighs 2,420 pounds, or about as much as an early ‘90s Honda Civic.
Really, what we care most about is how they covered most of the car in pure copper sheet. Just don't let tweakers strip it like the wires in a foreclosed house.
So are you happy that Europe's struggling economy is producing gas-sipping supercars, or do you wish automakers would just build fuel-guzzling hypercars like they did in the ‘90s? Let your voice be heard in Kinja below and play with the 360 image above.
Photo Credit: GF Williams/Jalopnik