This Maserati Bora concept is gorgeous

This is not a real car. In fact, it's not even a picture of an upcoming real car that will become real. It's a flight of fancy from one of TopGear.com's favourite renderisers: a modern take on the Bora, Maserati's mid-engined icon of the Seventies.

Alex Imnadze - the man who gave us the Alfa 6C concept a while back - penned this lovely new Maser, imagining a mid-engined GT car that takes the spirit of the Bora and infuses it with some thoroughly modern design overtones.

Yes, it's got Bora written all over it, but that's no bad thing, considering the original was a milestone in Maserati's history. Squint and there are shades of the MC12 hypercar (that's the one that cribbed from the Ferrari Enzo) too, itself the last production mid-engined Maserati. Anyone else getting notes of the Jaguar C-X75 in there, and hints of Veyron along the flanks?

Whatever the influences, it's very tasty. And also very NOT REAL. But considering Alex knocked this out during his spare time in just two weeks - ahead of an internship at legendary design house Bertone working on exterior car design (more on Bertone here) - we can't blame him for that.

Now, the original Bora used a 4.7-litre and 4.9-litre V8 mated to a five-speed manual gearbox, but seeing as it's not 1971 anymore, imagine this with the 6.3-litre, 730bhp V12 from the F12, a racing dual-clutch gearbox, some righteous exhaust noise and trick suspension (OK, so essentially the entire drivetrain from the F12), and we reckon Maser's onto a winner. Or does this require a LaFerrari-style hyper-hybrid set-up?

Vijay Pattni