2008 PARAGON ARTEGA GT

NEWS & REVIEWS Then you’re a wealthy German automotive electronics giant, what do you do to add a little razzmatazz to your company’s image? You build a 300-hp, midengined sports car, of course. But Paragon’s new Artega GT is much more than some idea out of a corporate brainstorming session. They called in Henrik Fisker, the former design boss at Aston Martin, to create the sexy lines of the bodywork and brought in Hardy Essig, the former technical designer at Porsche, to do the engineering development. The result, unveiled at last spring’s Geneva auto show, is a Mazda Miata-sized two seater featuring an aluminum-space-frame chassis and glass-fiber and carbon-fiber bodywork. Power comes from a 300-bhp 3.6-liter V-6, sourced from VW and mated to a DSG sequential shifter. When you mount that in a body that weighs little more than 2,400 pounds the results are explosive. Like zero-to-60 in less than five seconds. Paragon plans to build 500 Artega GTs a year, with production kicking off next summer and prices starting at well less than $80,000. Alas, there are no plans for U.S. sales. PHOTOS: click photos to enlarge