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Proportions more arresting than elegant. Superfluous, slash-like indentations above the wheel housings.

Double-blistered headlamp covers, deep-recessed taillights, an aluminium flip-top fuel filler, an aluminium key-fob and a bold repeat of the car’s exterior colour arcing across the dashboard. 

This was the Fiat Coupé, a car unexpectedly signaling that its maker was ready to build sports cars again, and a car signaling the arrival of one Chris Bangle, a designer who would soon stir up the car industry like few designers before him.

This car was a surprise not just for its shape, but because Fiat had previously said that it would no longer make pure sports cars, despite a glorious run in the 1960s that included the pretty 850 Coupé and Spider, the 124 Spider, the 124 and 128 Coupés, the Dino Coupé and the exquisite Fiat Dino Spider. 

That was before Paolo Cantarella arrived to take charge of Fiat Auto in 1989.

Cantarella was a businessman who had previously managed the Fiat Group’s industrial robot division Comau, but he was also a car enthusiast, and acutely aware of the Italian car industry’s past successes

Like any CEO, his overriding mission was to keep the Fiat Auto motor running sweetly, and while Puntos and Pandas sold by the trainload, the bigger Tipos and Cromas were more of a struggle. 

The Fiat brand needed some burnishing and, if the numbers could be made to work, this new coupé could help. 

Work began around 1991 at both Fiat Centro Stile and Pininfarina, the pair producing quite different proposals. 

Pininfarina’s was crisp, subtle, well-proportioned, elegant and conventional. 

Fiat’s in-house suggestion bordered on the outlandish, its wheel arches capped with angled elliptical blisters in black, a crease bisecting the upper third of its doors at exactly the same angle. Its tail was short, its boot lid no more than a modest capping.

It wasn’t beautiful but it was daring, original and fresh. Fiat bravely went with this proposal rather than Pininfarina’s, and while the finished article grew a longer and appealingly pert tail, the spirit of Bangle’s startling design survived largely intact. 

Pininfarina’s interior suggestion featuring a swathe of body colour paneling across dashboard and doors easily won the interior competition, the coachbuilder also winning the manufacturing contract.

The business case was strengthened by using a cut-down Tipo hatchback platform, engines from the Lancia Delta Integrale and plenty of shared parts. 

Few of these were visible, however, the Fiat was as memorable for the bespoke detail in its design as for its highly individual look. And there were more than the slashes and the fuel cap to savour. 

The bonnet was a huge clamshell pressing that rose skywards complete with grille and headlights. The headlights themselves were odd enough to have been questioned during Fiat’s internal design reviews, one manager asking how they might be cleaned with headlight washers, given their contours and near-horizontal mounting. 

‘Con amore,’ came the smiling reply, an answer that closed the conversation down.

Front-wheel drive and Tipo-based the Coupé may have been, but it rolled on a well-sorted chassis propelled by rorty, sporting engines, the potent turbo version featuring a viscous coupling limited-slip differential that did a great job of firing torque to Tarmac. 

The 16V turbo was quick, the 217bhp five-cylinder turbo rabidly so, scoring 6.5sec sprints to 62mph and 155mph. This Fiat was more about outright grip than throttle-adjustable handling finesse, making for slightly less-than-stellar entertainment, but as a total package, complete with four usable seats and a fair boot, it worked.

Fiat launched its coupé with the memorable claim that, ‘In Italy, no-one grows up wanting to be a train driver’, together with a fine picture of the machine in broom yellow. Ironically, Fiat owned the company that made the rapid Pendolino high-speed train at the time, but no-one cared about that – this Fiat was exciting.

Prices are edging up, but somehow this Fiat doesn’t yet feel a complete classic despite its credentials, and despite some bold pricing from optimistic vendors.

This column first appeared as an email to subscribers.

Chinese EV firm Xpeng has revealed the latest version of its Porsche Taycan-rivalling P7 sports saloon.

The company, which recently launched the G6 crossover in the UK and will soon sell the X9 MPV here, describes the second-generation P7 as "more than a car - it is Xpeng's answer for the AI [artificial intelligence] era in form and function".

The firm describes itself as an "AI-driven mobility company" and the new flagship Xpeng P7 is touted as a showcase of the various ways AI can redefine luxury cars.

Technical details have yet to be revealed, but the previous P7 was described as "the world's first AI-defined vehicle", with highly advanced, human-aping autonomous driving functions and a 'smart cockpit' with a conversational voice assistant and rapid processing times.

This latest generation is expected to build on those attributes and introduce even more advanced capabilities that will help the P7 stand out in China's increasingly crowded luxury saloon market - where it goes up against the likes of the Avatr 12, Nio ET9 and Luxeed S7.

The first images reveal that the P7's styling has dramatically evolved at the hands of designer Rafik Ferrag and could point to a new visual direction for the 11-year-old Chinese brand.

"With this new generation, we set out to design a pure-electric sports sedan that could amaze at every angle. This car is our dream – refined through countless iterations. In my eyes, the all-new Xpeng P7 is a work of art, shaped with emotion and purpose," Ferrag said.

Xpeng has promised more details on the P7 will follow but has not yet given any indication of whether it will be sold outside of China. But the brand's UK importer, International Motors, has told Autocar it plans to eventually make Xpeng the country's "number-one Chinese premium EV brand", with a line-up comprising five models by 2028.

The G6, X9 and G9 SUV are the first on the roadmap, with another two models due to follow in 2027 - one possibly being the P7.

Volkswagen CEO Thomas Schäfer has cast doubt on the prospect of the brand introducing range-extender (REx) powertrains in Europe, because it is already well served here by more conventional hybrid powertrains.

Volkswagen last month revealed the ID Era concept at the Shanghai motor show as a preview of a large, range-extender electric SUV, aimed at the Chinese market, with a total range of 621 miles. The brand’s sales and marketing chief said at the unveiling that REx technology could provide a “very good intermediate step for many consumers” and the powertrains could even “have relevance in Europe”.

But now Schäfer has told Autocar that REx powertrains make most sense in larger models – like the ID Era SUV – and may not have an obvious role to play in Volkswagen’s European strategy. 

"The technology is not really new. It came up again and spiked in China specifically, but probably also in the US it's applicable - in predominantly larger vehicles,” he said. “It makes sense if you have any kind of CO2 regulation and you need to comply with it, but in the bigger cars.

"The questionable area is in the smaller space. While you have PHEVs, do you really need range-extenders?”

Indeed, Volkswagen now offers almost every car above the Polo in Europe with a plug-in hybrid powertrain - providing as much as 88 miles of electric range in the Golf eHybrid, which could make it unnecessary to introduce another form of electrified powertrain. 

“It's an expensive technology", said Schäfer of a REx set-up, referencing the need to combine a large electric battery with a conventional ICE powertrain, "and from a drivability and cost point of view, it makes no sense to have both range-extenders and plug-in hybrids."

He pointed to the long EV ranges and fast-charging capabilities of Volkswagen's latest PHEVs and said swapping this system out in the Golf, Passat, Tiguan and Tayron "is probably not the way to go". 

"In bigger cars, yes. Scout, for example, in the US will have a range-extender," he said. "But it remains to be seen if this is just a spike or it will actually be a bigger trend."

The ID Era is one of three new Volkswagen concept cars designed for the Chinese market. It was joined at Shanghai by the Passat-sized ID Aura saloon and the ID Evo - a more rakish take on the SUV, but still larger than the Touareg. 

Schäfer said that while these three cars have been conceived primarily for China, Volkswagen could consider selling them globally - but only if there is demonstrable market demand and a viable business case. 

Asked if Volkswagen could bring the Evo or Era SUVs to Europe, he said: "We never said that we're not going to do that. The question is: where do they fit in the portfolio, and where's the market? 

"When you look in Europe, for these kinds of big SUVs, the market is very small, and it's premium-driven. So to invest in this in Europe is difficult. China, yes, US, yes - we have in the past done similar things like the Atlas in the US and Terramont in China, so there's a way you could work on both sides. 

"But for Europe, we have been working on: what is the portfolio? Where is the profit pool that we want to address? And in a time where you work with a tight budget, you have to make decisions: what do you want to address, first, second and third? And that's not something that I would address first in the European context."

"We have a clear line-up now, from the ID 1 all the way up, that we're very happy with - addressing right from the entry all the way to the upper end with the ID Buzz. 

"That doesn't mean that in the long run, once we get through this transformation a bit more, we couldn't get halo cars added to this core portfolio.”