Q50

Make
Infiniti
Segment
Sedan

Meet the Zedro Motors Notorious. It can be whatever you want it to be, as long as it's built on the bones of an Infiniti G37. The Notorious is built by a Lebanese company that expresses the often-repeated desire to revolutionize the automotive industry. In this case, Zedro plans to do that by offering a comfortable, convenient, and reliable exotic car with almost limitless customization options and designs. Top Gear caught up with Zedro at the Dubai Motor Show and was told the reason the company uses the Infiniti G37 underpinnings and twin-turbo V6 is that "it's extremely reliable, and that makes it cheap to maintain."

That explanation has our attention. An exotic car that's reliable and cheap to maintain is an attractive prospect. Particularly if the buy-in price is around $65,000 as Top Gear estimates. Of course, if that's the cost of the full-blooded 1,250 horsepower Notorious, then that would be a red flag. It won't be, though, as the base car is said to make 0-62 mph in 5.2 seconds while the most powerful makes the sprint in 3.2 seconds. Only 100 are set to be built, and Zedro says it's already sold five.

The question here is: Why would you go to a company you've never heard of when the C8 Corvette is about to launch for around the same base price? Well, Zedro says on its website that the scope for customization of the Notorious is immense, including a choice of headlights and taillights. That means each car can take on a very different look and, according to Zedro, means no two cars should be the same.

Whether its going to be legal and available is another matter. This kind of company with big ideas comes and goes, but we really, really, like this one. Its kind of like the idea of a kit car, where you take one car's chassis and turn it into something else, except the concept here is for that experience to be tailor-made. We hope they sell all 100 slots and get to expand the business idea further.