Is there anything more exciting than a good automotive mystery? No, of course there isn’t. What a silly question, I’m not even sure why you asked it. Still, I’m glad you did, because a fascinating automotive mystery has drooled out of the internet and onto my lap today, and it’s one that I think we should discuss. It’s a mystery car – well, not even that, really, a drawing of a mystery car, appearing in the background of a photograph of Jaguar’s 1999 concept car, the XK 180.
It’s not the XK 180 that’s interesting in this picture, and that’s saying a lot, since for most pictures the XK 180 is in, it’s the interesting part of that picture. But in this picture, taken in the studios of Abbey Panels, the Coventry-based coachbuilder, we see the XK 180 concept – or, more likely, a detailed and painted clay styling model of the car – it’s the wall-sized packaging and layout drawing of an unidentified four-door sedan that catches my attention.
It was in this tweet that I saw this image, and was so struck:
Boxing Day puzzle for you. I'm reading the autobiog of former Jaguar designer Keith Helfet. This pic of the XK180 styling model in the studio at Abbey Panels in Coventry caught my eye, not for the Jag but because of the mystery package drawing behind it. Anyone know what it was? pic.twitter.com/etWbbDk6zc
— Richard Porter (@sniffpetrol) December 26, 2024
Okay, so there’s the XK 180 – I’m guessing this picture was likely taken in 1997 or 1998, a bit after this photo of the XK 180 concept was taken, because in the linked photo the model isn’t painted yet, and this one is. So this has to be after that, say sometime in 1998.
But let’s look closer at that car drawing in the background:
See anything interesting there? Here, let me help:
Look at that: this fairly normally-proportioned four-door sedan is hiding a big secret! It’s a mid-rear-engine design! That silhouette looks a lot like a transverse inline- (probably) four setup, the kind of thing that could have been relocated rearward from a high-volume transverse front/FWD design, sort of like what GM did with the Fiero.
Who the hell was considering a mid-rear four-door sedan in the late 1990s? The design looks like it could be a number of things; it has a sort of cab-forward Mopar feeling to it, like a Dodge Neon, and sort of reminds me of the Neon concept car from 1991:
It’s not that, though. It just reminded me of it enough to justify putting the picture in here. The overall shape and proportions and the rear sort of feels like a Mark I Ford Mondeo:
Of course, my thinking may be clouded by the fact that Ford bought Jaguar in 1999, and, if I’m honest, there are a lot of cars around this era with taillights roughly that shape and overall proportions and design like that.
But none of those were mid-engined.
The front hood seems pretty steeply raked, and if we follow the hood line out, I think it may have tapered to a pretty dramatically sloped front end:
What was this thing? I’m dying to know. There have been vanishingly few non-sports car mid-rear (not counting vans like the Previa, which was more mid-front, anyway) designs in the (relatively) modern era of cars. I can only think of the Volkswagen prototype EA266, which never made it to production, but was a mid-rear family car:
Even that wasn’t a full four-door sedan, though! What other four-door, mid-rear-engined cars are there that were built in any real numbers? Maybe the Tatra 700 counts? It’s barely mid-rear, with that engine right over the rear axle, but I think we can count it.
I suppose if we go way, way back, the Rumpler Tropfenwagen might count, too:
But, really, that’s about it. Whatever that mid-engined four-door sedan was, it would have been incredibly unique if it made it to market.
I tried looking up other clients that Abbey Panels had, but I couldn’t really find anything that seemed to fit this. The X-Twitter feed has lots of speculation, with some people thinking the wheels feel like Lotus, and maybe Lotus was considering a bigger family car (they do have the mid-engine expertise) and some going the Mondeo route, but so far I don’t think anyone knows.
So, you know what that means! We need to speculate! Wildly! Guess! Assume things, with wanton glee! Maybe we’ll stumble onto the truth!
Not sure exactly what it is, but getting something along the lines of Dodge Stratus and Chrysler Cirrus vibes
I’m not so sure the Neon should be dismissed as an option so quickly. The original Neon was a pretty wild car in its concept stages. For instance it was supposed to be powered by an Orbital direct injected 2 stroke engine as originally conceived, and that quirk made it pretty far towards production before being ditched for a conventional 4 stroke 2 liter. It isn’t out of the realm of possibility that they were thinking of cramming that little 2 stroke behind the rear seats at some point, taking full advantage of the packaging benefits of the increased power density over a 4 stroke engine for improved passenger and luggage space.
Just some speculation here.
The more I look at it I think it has the makings of a Ford RS200 family saloon reimagine. Whoever was on the Mondero track, think of that with a Reliant RS200 frp nose and maybe homologation special targeting. Wasn’t there some thought by Ford given to bringing back the RS200 several times?
Porsche 914 study to appeal to those of us who could no longer get into our sports cars due to girth and age?
definitely a cab-forward Neon
Rover. It’s likely a Rover, probably a replacement for the Maestro based on the size. Mini starting in 1994 was rushing to completely replace the original Mini, Metro (later Austin), and Clubman after decades of production for each. Rover asked BMW to help with the Mini, and I’m betting based on the 1995 MG MG-F that shares a lot of the styling cues that this was supposed to be a Rover sharing the MG-F’s platform.
You could have something there, Rover’s original plan to replace the Mini was the rear engine/RWD Mini Spiritual project in 2 door and 4 door versions, they were already playing around with that sort of platform, maybe this was an attempt to spin a somewhat bigger/more upscale sedan off of it