Reinventing

works project as Albaisa’s fellow designers contributing ideas. Then, when managers at Nissan’s factory in Oppama saw a model of the car, they decided they wanted to turn it into real thing. “I was a little surprised,” Albaisa admitted, “but it turns out they still train people in all the traditional car-building arts. They thought this was the perfect project, and they decided - on their own - to follow the design story as if [it were] real.” A team of takumi--Nissan’s master craftspeople - assembled to lead the build. Nissan’s advanced engineering team learned about the project and volunteered to help, as did Nissan’s specialty vehicle division, Autech. “Suddenly we had three of our largest departments working on it,” Albaisa said.

Also electric-powered

And this is where the Prototype 9 gets interesting.

Underneath that retro skin is an electric motor powertrain closely related to the one that will power the next-generation Nissan Leaf. Developed and tweaked by Nissan Advanced Powertrain, the rearmounted motor makes 148 hp and 236 lb-ft (320 Newton-meters) and drives the says, to propel the 1,962-pound Prototype 9 to 60 mph (96 kph) in less than 5.5 seconds. Top speed is limited to 105 mph (168 kph), down from a theoretical maximum of more than 130 mph (208 kph). The 30-kW-hr battery pack stacked ahead for about 20 minutes of hard track driving.

Those performance numbers might not sound impressive in the context of a Tesla P100D, but look again at the Prototype solid front axle and De Dion rear axle, both suspended by transverse leaf springs, and those tall, vintage-section cross-ply tires. Now imagine what it would be like hustling this thing through a 100-mph (160-kph) sweeper or powering it out of a tight hairpin on that skinny rubber. This is one electric car that promises to be anything but boring to drive.

The juxtaposition of old and new is everywhere, both in terms of the Prototype 9’s hardware and the way in which it has been constructed. What look like old-school drum brakes behind the wire wheels are in fact housings around modern discs. The rotational dampers on the axles are conceptually similar to the friction shocks used in the 1930s, but they are electrically controlled. The steering is an unassisted recirculating ball system. The grid over which the aluminum tail cone was hand-formed is made of laser- cut steel. The one-piece hood was made using a process called dieless forming, using two seven-axis robots to shape the metal instead of two old-school metalworkers.

For Infiniti, making the Prototype 9 turned to be more than an intricate team-building exercise. It offered a mass producer of automobiles unique insights into the art of handcrafting one, and it has sown the seed of a fascinating idea: As mass-market automobility becomes the preserve of self-driving autonomous vehicles, could there be a market for what could best be described as “passion cars,” vehicles that have absolutely nothing to do with transportation and everything to do with the art and fun of driving?

“That’s one of the branches of this,” Albaisa said. “The more our life becomes easier, the more our time to dream becomes richer. Why wouldn’t we make a hundred of them? Why wouldn’t we make a thousand?” Ironically, an EV powertrain-- simple, compact, and the bte noir of automotive enthusiasts who believe their passion can only be powered by an internal combustion engine -actually makes building whimsical passion cars such as the Prototype 9 a lot more feasible.

Creating an electric-powered driver’s car with retro styling, an antique suspension, and vintage tires might seem incongruous for a 21st-century automaker that’s not yet 30 years old. But that’s the whole point of the Prototype 9, Albaisa said, pointing out that technology won’t always stir the soul when it comes to automobiles. “We always dream about the future, but this time we dreamed about the past.”