2012 Salon Prive will seethe birth of a brand-new British sports car. It’s called Iceni Grand Tourer, and it’s made by Trident. By the looks of things, this car wants to be Britain’s Weismann. It’s light, it’s very very fast, and it has a body that looks like it belongs the 1960s. It even appears to have a removable hard top.

The engine powering the Iceni is a 6.6-litre turbo-diesel with Torque Multiplication technology. This engine – mounted at front but behind the front axle for better weight distribution – can run on normal diesel, bio diesel, palm oil and linseed oil. It makes 430bhp and a truly remarkable 950lbs ft of torque. And if that’s not enough, you can opt for a 660bhp tune that also offers 1050lbs ft of torque.

But even the 430 bhp version is plenty fast by anyone’s standards. It goes from 0 to 60mph in 3.3 seconds and flat out it does near as makes no difference 200 mph. Even more amazing than the performance is the fuel economy though. Trident says the Iceni is capable of 68.9mpg which means it can cover 2000 miles with a single tank of fuel!

Part of the reason it’s so economical is the engine, which at 70 mph ticks over at just 980rpm and yet produces 700lbs ft of torque.

Those figures are almost too good to be true, so let’s wait for a real world test to see if Trident is actually onto something here.