HOWZAT

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To keep the Loremo light he stripped its interior of clutter and lined the car’s steel girders with a lightweight synthetic fabric. The car’s sleek exterior is both handsome and aerodynamic, with a drag co-efficient of 0.2, compared with the 0.3 or 0.4 of most autos. And it’s a myth, says Tobias, that lighter cars are more vulnerable in an accident: just watch any Formula 1 racer emerge unscathed from a pile-up.

“The problem is that marketing dictates how cars are built,” says Tobias. “These days cars are designed first, and then they try to make them aerodynamic. We wanted to build a car without these sorts of compromises, which perfectly fulfils several specific aims. Because we are a small company we don’t have a hundred people coming up with little changes. As a team we’ve argued about all sorts of details but it’s constructive.”

Tobias thinks that car owners are ready to get over their own prejudices. “Seven or eight years ago there were no SUVs. Today every mother is told that she can’t get the kids to school unless she drives a tractor. And yet 80 per cent of SUVs are single occupancy. We wanted to get back to the idea of driving as a technical experience, as a labour of love.”

But if all this is such a good idea why aren’t the big manufacturers on to it? Actually, says Uli, he touted the idea around in 1999 when oil still cost $9 a barrel. “They said to me, ‘This is a great idea, but who’s interested when petrol’s so cheap.’ Then the oil crisis happened.” Last September, petrol prices in the UK reached a record high, following instability in the Middle East and a severe hurricane season in the US.

The Loremo in Geneva is only a prototype. To get this far it has cost €5 million — collected from private investors, founding members and from the Malaysian engineering and technology company Kosmo, which pledged a further €1.6 million this year to get the car up and running. It is a huge risk. When VW launched its environmentally friendly Lupo, Greenpeace initially trashed it. The organisation later changed its mind but the damage was done. The Loremo can’t fail, say its creators, because if it fails there isn’t another car to pick up the pieces. Tobias cheerfully describes the car industry as “shark-infested water”.

Two men from an online publication called prova (“the magazine for the avant-garde automobile”) are scratching their chins in front of the Loremo. One of them is Dieter Rossbach, who owns seven cars and a couple of motorbikes. Lately, though, he’s been affected by a terrible ennui. The problem with cars, he says, is that there are none that he wants to buy anymore.

“They’re too heavy, too many airbags, too many electronics. You’ve got a situation where the car decides how to drive, not the driver. If I want to be driven I’ll take the train.”

Rainer agrees: “It’s getting to the point where you and your GPS are expected to have a philosophical discussion à la Douglas Adams.”

But is the Loremo the answer? “That is a very complex question,” says Dieter. “This is a car that is bucking every trend. It’s frugal when everyone else is going for luxury. And visually it’s absolutely perfectly realised.

“They’re very brave to be doing this on their own. But there are fundamental weaknesses too. That seating position can make some people feel unwell and there has always been controversy about sticking an engine in the middle of the car. Add to that the fact they can’t spread their risks or do the marketing like a big organisation could — well, it’s incredibly difficult to predict.”

This month, Gerhard Heilmaier found a suitable site on which to build the Loremo assembly line. All he’ll say is that it’s somewhere in Germany. After the initial run of 5,000 Loremos there’ll be the Loremo hatchback, the Loremo soft-top and the Loremo pick-up. Once they’re built, how can he be so sure that the cars will sell? “The advantage we have over the big companies is stealth, flexibility and innovation,” he says. “I’d be naïve to say that people will buy this car because to save the environment. “They’ll buy it because if you’re a commuter you can save more than €2,000 a year and still do 250kp/h on the motorway.”

FACTS BEHIND A CAR REVOLUTION