A 17k sport car made in France | Hacker News Reader

A 17k sport car made in France

mpm-motors.com

31 pointszettacircl63 comments

As per the FAQ question "Why not make it more powerful?" (via Google Translate):

> Do not forget that it is a lowcost car, it has a sporty look, yes, but it is not a sport, hence its price.

My main worries for it being a "sports car" are that the transverse engine suggests front wheel drive (unless there's evidence to the contrary?) and the lack of any discussion of the gearbox other than specifying it as "mechanical" (which hopefully is a mistranslation of "manual"?)

Also it's not THAT low cost, given that its main competition seems to be the Toybaru BRZ which is only EU 3k more and has 200hp to this thing's 130hp (and the primary criticism of which is STILL "it's underpowered".)

Edit: I misread. As pointed out below, the BRZ is actually a fair bit more expensive.

Mechanical means manual. That kind of transmission/gearbox is called mechanical in many languages.

The brz and the gt86 are around 30k in Europe, so the increase is a bit more

My main issue would be fixing stuff if it breaks. Toyota dealer's got you. With this thing after a few years good luck, unless they have built it on a bunch of standard parts from a Japanese or German manufacturer or something.

The site states it has an EB2ADTS engine. That's a PSA group engine used in a bunch of cars such as the Peugeot 3008. So support/parts would be be pretty easy to obtain.

But I don't think it uses PSA's EMP2 platform. Wikipedia says this car is a modified Tagaz Aquila.

You're right! And MPM is "Mikhail Paramonov Manufacturing"... they've stuck a lot of French flags on their website, but it's a russian design

EDIT: something very fishy going on... https://en.crimerussia.com/oligarchs/versailles-mansion-of-t...

the design is 100% Korean, the first project was produced at the Ukrainian border for 4 months in factories rented to the Tagaz group, then the group closed and the project was forgotten until we bought back the rights

It's basically a "warm hatch" (FWD - "traction" in the description - with a small turbocharged peugeot engine), but with the body shell of a sports car.

For that price you can get a real pocket rocket e.g. VW Up GTI - 115HP (VW Hp, not Peugeot Hp...) and less than 1000kg, whereas this is more than 1200. But nothing with a bigger size

I confirm 16k is about half the cost of the Toyota/Subaru (before you consider the performance and emissions tax), they are clearly semi-luxury cars here.

+ Reading through the details, I see they have not passed Euro NCAP certification. Now I understand their reasons (cost), but I would be very very reluctant to sit in one

Since I was a teenager I never understood why cheap cars had to be ugly in the exterior. I understand that if you're a car company you don't want to cannibalize sales of your higher-end models, but that doesn't stop a new company coming up with a really nice looking budget car.

Why did that never happen? I still wonder.

This car looks really nice, and proves that a nice looking car doesn't have to be expensive.

Exactly, it is just different shaped molds.

For steel maybe, but even then it can be tricky to make some shapes. Doing it at scale with high precision is hard regardless of what you're making.

Bending more exotic metals, glass, and carbon fibre in more than one direction at once while maintaining it's strength is a really hard problem.

Also less expensive car shapes are optimized for other priorities like space efficiency and ease of manufacture.

And don’t forget that much of what makes a sports car attractive is psychological and powered by a true perception of scarcity. If everyone’s car looked like an Aston Martin DB11 they wouldn’t be nearly so attractive as they look to us.

It's hard to make a new car company, especially one that targets the low end of the market. The low end of the market has tighter margins, and therefore needs high volume to be profitable. Hard to imagine a startup achieving that.

I think Mazda is trying to fill in that niche, the recent 2019 Mazda3 is more refined and luxurious compared to competitors in it's class, but without the price tag of a German luxury.

The Mazda 3 is definitely not a "cheap car" in Europe. Mazda are positioning themselves slightly more upmarket in the premium sector, trying to nibble away at VW's dominance in this sector

The last time I tested a Mazda3 it fell squarely into the econobox category. What do you find luxurious about it? Or perhaps there's a secret trim level?

Cheap cars are ugly on the exterior because 1) they are small, but 2) customers want the maximum possible interior space in those small cars. So they become awkwardly tall, boxy, with wheels out in their corners and so on. Also 3) they have to be reasonable to get into and out of.

Exactly. Someone buying a cheap car is making a decision based on reason, not emotion

But they don't all look too bad: The Dacia Duster isn't ugly (if you like SUVs in general), and it's cheap as chips

Duster is hardly optimised for boxiness compared to WagonR, which costs half as much in India, and has to make more usable space from much smaller dimensions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Wagon_R

My guess is that the design itself is expensive.

I'm a car guy and I had never heard of this until today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkNga_su--w

Check out the video.

Build quality and fit/finish is worse than Chinese cars from early 2000s. Panel gaps, alignment, interior quality, materials. Absolutely horrendous. Inexcusable even for $17k. For that money, you are better off buying a Honda Fit. I don't see the point of this car at all.

> Panel gaps, alignment, interior quality, materials.

None of this is important.

Well, in that case, neither is the car.

Apparently you haven’t bought a recent model Tesla.

Not sure why I got the downvote. I was snarky but not sarcastic. Ask any Tesla certified body shop. Watch any YouTube video. They’re notorious for bad finishes. Hell, I found out that mine came with undisclosed damage that required bondo to fix. The most common explanation I’ve heard from Tesla is that this is just something that happens on their $100k cars: damage in the factory that they patch and don’t disclose.

Or a used BMW Z4 :) I'd buy one if I hadn't live in the city center.

People always say this, until they take into account the insurance difference, the fuel difference, the tyre price difference, the maintenance difference...

Still worth it IMHO. Yes, it's a 10 year old car, but with a semi decent salary it's affordable.

oh definitely! it's just not the same recurring cost as a cheap honda

The point is that I would certainly buy this car have I the money, despite minor drawbacks (not "horrendous" based on the video).

French cars, particularly Renault and Citroën do have a terrible reputation for being cheaply and shoddily made, so perhaps not surprising.

it was true 10 years ago, they are now among the top 5 most reliable in europe

And the owner of "MPM motors" is not the most trustworthy individual apparently: https://en.crimerussia.com/oligarchs/versailles-mansion-of-t...

There are two things that are important for a sports car:

1) it should look cool

2) it should be fun to drive

If it delivers on those two points, things like panel gaps and interior materials are irrelevant.

In Europe there are many, many more choices for this sort of money than a Honda Fit (Jazz). A lot of them are faster than this too.

the link of your video was made by an amateur journalist who had a pre-series (11 490 € full options) this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTJ90CMqMDM shows the tests of one of our cars that came out of the production line 6 months ago, you can see the difference, and this difference is remarkable at this point, every 6 months around in function of the progress that we do

Is it just me but does a new petrol Euro 6.2 engine make sense in 2019? I know it's targeting the sports market but if they went with an electric motor, they would have a pretty competitive vehicle imo (they are limited to 1000 cars/year though).

Totally agree. Just found it fun that we can make "a sport car" for below 20k (it was sold at 8k before launch) with very common car parts.

Can you explain

> it was sold at 8k before launch

Kickstarter type thing maybe?

We started by selling the "pre-series" (something that is not done at major manufacturers who destroy the pre-series normally.

We started selling the first at 8500 € and the price to evolve at the same time as the progress on the car (car assembled 100% by hand)

You can get a new Mitsubishi Mirage for under $10k, if you really wanted to. Just like this car, it also comes with a 1.2L 3-cylinder engine, and is also not at all a sports car.

They sell that as the "Chevrolet Colt" here... definitely don't do a turbocharged version with 130hp though

In France, the Mirage is sold as the SpaceStar, and the cheapest 1.2L option is €13,495, which is upwards of $15,000 USD. Motoring in general is very inexpensive in the States, so it's difficult to make meaningful a comparison on price.

To dispel all misunderstandings, NO, it is not a sports and obviously not a super car (130hp 1.2Turbo for 16 490 € ... obviously not :) - The goal of this car is to have a relatively inexpensive leisure vehicle with a "sporty" design (that we like or not) and feelings of "fun" driving (due in particular to the standard bucket seats, in the center low gravity, tubular black currant fairly rigid, the sound of the engine well present in the cabin, the weight / power ratio that remains correct for a car of 4.68m (1240kg) and the side "gross" and "without filter" which will delight some and will scare others. - So NO, it's not a sports, we do not even communicate on the 0/100 so it's the opposite of what we wanted to do. - Yes the road behavior is excellent (proportionately kept and useless comparison with sports). - The car on loan for this test was just coming out of the assembly line (we are in constant flow) and we asked the testers not to force too hard on the engine. - Yes it is about finishes constantly being improved and no it is not a luxury car, far from it (it's a car made by hand in the 78, the only robot there is at home is the coffee machine). - We are an SME with all that implies and compare us to major manufacturers, their unlimited means, their finish, their equipment, would not necessarily be wise. (same for comparisons with cars of big brands in occasion)

Not sure whether a new internal combustion engine makes sense at this point in time, but it's certainly not where I'd start if I were trying to launch a marque with a focus on low cost. Same with the space frame construction which is very labour intensive. I wish them well but they're making some odd choices.

Electric would cost a lot more currently. ICE engine are cheap and well known (especially if you're not designing it yourself) and you don't have to fight with all the battery issues. I hope this will evolve fast !

Was hoping for electro too. I find a petrol 'sports' car in 2019 just repelling.

There's something very dodgy about this.. At no point in their "history" do they mention that this is the Tagaz Aquila from Russia, and that MPM motors is Mikhail Paramonov: https://en.crimerussia.com/oligarchs/versailles-mansion-of-t...

So he bankrupted his previous car company TagAz, and now he's selling the same car under a new company...

Is there an relatively affordable road legal car designed for maximum sportiness at expense of comfort and beauty? Example optimisations in mind: door above knee high roll cage, single headlight unit near the center (why distribute two masses towards edges?), two piece windscreen if need be, door made out of a steel slab with outside hinges, windows that dont roll down completely.

> relatively affordable road legal car designed for maximum sportiness at expense of comfort and beauty

Caterham Caterham Caterham :) You can even build it yourself. Sadly not possible in France

Caterham 7s start at £26,490 in the UK with comfort being a definite low priority

https://www.caterhamcars.com/en/models/the-iconic-range/seve...

They don't sell the 160 anymore? It was less than 15 grand in kit!

Nope.

Hello everyone, A customer sent us this link, I see a lot of questions and sometimes misunderstanding too :)

Have a look on our faceBook page instagram, you will see more things

To quickly summarize our young company:

MPM Motors is a young French car manufacturer founded in 2015 in the 78. The goal is simple, to offer vehicles with a sporty look for a reasonable budget, to a public who often remains dreamy in front of cars inaccessible to the common people.

The PS160 and its evolution ERELIS are the first models of a range of vehicles developed by MPM MOTORS. We manually assemble our vehicles in our factory in Saint Quentin en Yvelines (near Paris). Thus creating a hundred jobs in the region since 2016.

The combination of space frame and composite body, inspired by motorsport, allows us a unique design for a production car, providing exceptional handling and sports sensations for a limited cost.

= To dispel all misunderstandings, NO, it is not a sports and obviously not a super car (130hp 1.2Turbo for 16 490 € ... obviously not :) - The goal of this car is to have a relatively inexpensive leisure vehicle with a "sporty" design (that we like or not) and feelings of "fun" driving (due in particular to the standard bucket seats, in the center low gravity, tubular black currant fairly rigid, the sound of the engine well present in the cabin, the weight / power ratio that remains correct for a car of 4.68m (1240kg) and the side "gross" and "without filter" which will delight some and will scare others. - So NO, it's not a sports, we do not even communicate on the 0/100 so it's the opposite of what we wanted to do. - Yes the road behavior is excellent (proportionately kept and useless comparison with sports). - The car on loan for this test was just coming out of the assembly line (we are in constant flow) and we asked the testers not to force too hard on the engine. - Yes it is about finishes constantly being improved and no it is not a luxury car, far from it (it's a car made by hand in the 78, the only robot there is at home is the coffee machine). - We are an SME with all that implies and compare us to major manufacturers, their unlimited means, their finish, their equipment, would not necessarily be wise. (same for comparisons with cars of big brands in occasion) - We remain at your disposal to answer all your questions without language as usual.

(sorry for my aproximative english :))

Guillaume de Berry MPM Motors France

Hmmm, there's a banner at the bottom that says 'Recruiting for 2018'. Is this thing dead?

Could anyone find the performance statistics? 0-100kph?

According to their FAQ, it's 10s, and the max speed is 180kph. The same entry mentions that the car is not a sports car, only has the looks.

http://www.mpm-motors.com/faq/ Section "Pourquoi ne pas avoir mis plus de puissance?"

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