Artega GT news - Brit Art’ - 2008

The Artega GT is coming to the UK. In right-hand drive. This is good news. Well, good news if you live in the UK.

The GT - which we became somewhat smitten with back in Frankfurt last year - is a two-seater coupe drawn up by former Aston designer Henrik Fisker. Artega is pitching it as a sub £50,000 rival to the Porsche Cayman.

Ambitious claims, but we've got high hopes for Artega. Backed by car component builder Paragon, the manufacturer has just built an all-new factory in Delbruck, Germany, where it plans to build some 20 cars a day with production starting this summer.

The mechanical bits sound equally shipshape: the GT is powered by a VW-sourced 3.6-litre V6 putting 300bhp through a six-speed DSG gearbox. Artega has confirmed our guess that it'll hit 60mph in the just-under-five-second bracket and top out around 170mph - a Rizla paper off the Cayman S.

With a claimed kerbweight of just 1100kg - 300kg lighter than the Cayman - the GT should be as good to drive as it is to look at. Oh, and in one more bit of good news, Artega says it will extend production beyond the initial 500-car run - up to as many as 1000 cars a year - and will even produce a convertible version.

We should see the right-hand drive coupe in the UK next January. 
It feels good to be British.