The Con­cept RA has appeared in Detroit look­ing like a cross between the new Lancer EVO and (per­haps) the lat­est gen­er­a­tion USDM Mit­subishi Eclipse, or even an Audi TT.

The strictly con­cept only (Sorry, guys and girls) Con­cept RA sports a 2.2 litre, DOHC 16-​​valve 150kw/​201HP/​420nm high out­put, clean burn diesel engine, as part of Mitsubishi’s new drive towards eco-​​friendly per­for­mance sports cars.

In order to achieve low con­sump­tion while not sac­ri­fic­ing per­for­mance means the Con­cept RA fea­tures Mitsubishi’s pro­pri­etary MIVEC vari­able valve con­trol tech­nol­ogy, an all alu­minum space frame, vari­able diffuser/​variable geom­e­try tur­bocharger, peizo­elec­tric injec­tor sys­tem and also sports some impact resis­tant, recy­clable plas­tic resin pan­els as part of it’s construction.

Envi­ron­men­tal fea­tures include a new cat­alytic con­verter sys­tem that com­bines a diesel oxi­da­tion cat­a­lyst (DOC), NOx trap cat­a­lyst (NTC) and diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF) in addi­tion to the highly effi­cient 2.2 litre clean burn­ing diesel.

Of course, the Con­cept RA sports Full­time 4WD, Twin Clutch SST Trans­mis­sion, and the new S-​​AWC (Super-​​All Wheel Con­trol) most notably seen on the new EVO. As men­tioned before on IJ, S-​​AWC is a com­bi­na­tion of exist­ing tech­nolo­gies, Active Cen­ter Dif­fer­en­tial, Active Yaw Con­trol, ABS and Active Sta­bil­ity Control.

Unfor­tu­nately though, all this is to be shelved as the car is designed purely as a con­cept, and won’t chal­lenge either Honda’s offer­ing in the new CRZ (CRX) or Toyota’s rumored new ‘AE86’.

Just in time for Christ­mas, Honda’s dropped the all new, 5th gen­er­a­tion Inspire.

The new Inspire fea­tures styling cues seen on the new USDM Accord, and a V6 3.5-liter i-​​VTEC engine fea­tur­ing a Vari­able Cylin­der Man­age­ment (VCM) sys­tem. The VCM enables cylin­der switch­ing (based on dri­ving con­di­tions) between 6, 4 and 3 cylinders.

The V6 pro­duces 206kW (280PS) of power and 342N�m (34.9kg�m) of torque while main­tain­ing emis­sion lev­els 75% below 2005 Japan­ese gov­ern­ment standards.

Other fea­tures include

• Col­li­sion Mit­i­ga­tion Brake Sys­tem (CMBS)
• ABS (Anti-​​lock Brake System)
• EBD (Elec­tronic Brake Distribution)
• G-​​CON (G-​​force Con­trol) technology
• VGR (vari­able steer­ing gear ratio)
• Intel­li­gent, dual fully auto­matic air con­di­tioner (uses GPS infor­ma­tion and a sun­light sen­sor to deter­mine the direc­tion and inten­sity of the sun�s rays and reg­u­late tem­per­a­ture and air out­put accordingly.)
• HID (High Inten­sity Dis­charge) Headlights

Unfor­tu­nately, the Inspire is only avail­able in a 5 speed auto­matic transmission.

[Source: Honda]

Just damn sexy, the Nis­san GT-​​R

Finally, after the heartache, tears, and edge of the seat antic­i­pa­tion, the Nis­san GT-​​R pic­tures have hit the blo­gos­phere like noth­ing else. Feast your eyes on Nissan’s lat­est foray into the Super­car mar­ket. Sport­ing the all new 3.8L twin turbo VR38VETT pow­er­house, the new GT-​​R will whisk you from 0–100 in 3.5s or less, and do the quar­ter in a very healthy 11.7seconds. The Corvette and 911 now have some seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion from Japan; and who knows what the Japan­ese tun­ing houses, or just enthu­si­asts, will extract from the new GT-​​R?

But enough. There’s one rea­son you’re here. Enjoy and know hap­pi­ness as only the GT-​​R can deliver.

The 2008 Nis­san GT-​​R