GE Vector

When I went back into my archives recently, I realized that nearly ten years ago I had written about this cute little General Electric hatchback, itself a Citroën AX in (low) drag (thermoplastic).

Since then, I haven’t seen it pop up on anyone’s feeds, it’s time for a revisit.

Here, we have an AX that was reimagined in 1986 by the Centre of Automotive Engineers in the Netherlands, with the cooperation of a General Electric plastics division. (It's also not the first GE car, but one of many: the Centennial Electric GE-100, Delta, Max, and Scope are its relatives.)

You're looking at thermoplastic body panels, plastic engine sump, and plastic interior parts. The team built two cars, with the second up for sale in 2014 on Ebay — and from what I saw, it may not have sold. 

The first car was a running, driving prototype, while the second was more of a demonstration machine, a "pusher" that had all of the mechanical components of the original Citroën, plus as many extra plastic bits as possible, including the valve cover, door frames, radiator frame, and a number of other smaller parts.

Apart from the knowledge that the plastic helped shed some weight from the already feather-like, 1.4-litre 4-cylinder powered AX, I have no idea what its performance was like.