Car and Driver: This May Look Familiar: Presenting the Karma Revero

What we have here is the first picture of the Karma Revero—but you’d be forgiven for stifling a yawn. After all, we’ve seen this before, as the Fisker Karma, a plug-in hybrid first seen in the dark days at the end of 2008. Fisker the company eventually imploded into bankruptcy, but the car was semi-resurrected as the VLF Destino, swapping its hybrid powertrain for a ZR1 V-8. Now it’s back again as a hybrid with a new name and a brand-new logo!

On its slick website, Karma Automotive acts as if it built this devastatingly sexy sedan from scratch somewhere in Southern California—which the car’s actual designer, Henrik Fisker, did when he founded Fisker Automotive there nearly a decade ago. Unlike Fisker Automotive, however, Karma Revero is not an independent car company banking on government loans to survive. Salvaged from Fisker’s remains, it’s owned by giant Chinese auto-parts supplier Wanxiang (which also bought out the last of A123 Systems, Fisker’s American battery supplier).

The Revero, for its part, is supposed to debut in September and sell for $100 grand, although as yet we know nothing of its electric range, specifications, and all the other details that tend to sell a luxury car.

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• Free Fixes for Fiskers! A Sign of New Life for the Former PHEV Maker -
• Wanxiang Renaming Fisker “Elux”, New Karmas Delayed Until 2016 -
• Despite Warning Signs, Fed Kept Money Flowing to Fisker -

We do know, however, that Karma—the new company, not the old car—is painting each hood badge by hand, a touch that surely will attract lovers of hand-painted images of solar eclipses, which near as we can decipher is what Karma’s abstract logo is. Maybe it’s supposed to represent optimism; if it doesn’t, it should.

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