At a glance, I thought Lamborghini had decided to enter the super lightweight sportscar market. The loud orange paint, exotic sounding name, and mid engine supercar shape could trick anyone into thinking it is a product of an Italian car company; but no, this car has its roots in Mexico! This svelte racer debuted at the 2008 British Auto show and is destined to be released sometime before summer 2009 – only in Europe though (pricing has been set somewhere under £40,000).

That’s quite a bit of money to spend on a completely new car from a car company without any track record. What does a buyer get for his or her money anyways? You get a chassis that weighs just a hair under 2000 lbs (900kg) which is powered by a Ford 2.0 Liter Duratec Inline 4 engine tuned by Cosworth. This motor produces 240 horsepower and will bring the Mastretta to 60 MPH in 5.0 seconds and a top speed somewhere around 150 MPH. They noted that the chassis is crafted from “bonded aluminum” which is supposedly also used by aircraft (which is really good I guess) and is covered with exterior paneling made from high quality fiberglass. In the same breath, they mentioned that there will be leather seats and air conditioning.

I suppose the mention of “luxury” features such as leather and AC mean that this car is not designed to be the stripped down racer (like the Lotus Elise) that it looks so much like (check out the interior door panels though – extremely sparse). Obviously its small size and lightweight don’t exactly make it a boulevard cruiser either – it’s looks sure don’t help! While the car looks pretty handsome at first, looking at the side and rear profiles turn me off pretty quickly. I’m normally not one to criticisize new cars (I think this is the first time I’ve done it in a blog!), there is just too much going on in the side profile. A more conventional door and rear quarter panel design could have had created a better looking car from the side. The rear is pretty awful though – the shape that it uses is used in a number of other cars such as the Murcielago and F430 but those two cars are much larger than the Mastretta. The plastic paneling at the bottom of the rear fascia has got to go as well; it looks cheap and tacky, especially with the single exhaust pipe. I can’t think of another car that has a single rear exhaust outlet except the Murcielago LP640 – which is GIGANTIC and hexagon shaped. One regular sized pipe coming out the back almost seems like a joke – while things like shouldn’t really matter on performance cars, you still gotta be taken seriously while on the track/in the canyons!

Stay tuned for more updates on this car!