Legendary Italian coachbuilder Zagato has tried its hand with most European car brands, but only ever worked with two Asian ones. The Zagato Gavia Concept was Nissan-based, and the VM180 Coupe depicted here is a Toyota MR2 at heart. It is also on sale right now.
Compared to the stock MR2, the VM180 features new lighting, bumpers, exhaust pipe and rear diffuser. The 1.8-liter IC engine now churns out 155 PS (153 hp / 114 kW) and 178 Nm (131 lb-ft) of torque instead of the usual 140 PS (138 hp / 103 kW) and 172 Nm (127 lb-ft). Given the modest scale of the tuning and automatic transmission, it is perhaps unsurprising that the coupe needs around eight seconds to go from zero to 100 km/h (62 mph). A manual gearbox would have done much here, we suspect.
A total of 100 units of the Zagato VM180 was pieced together exclusively for Japan.