Venturi Fétish

I still adore this first Venturi Fétish. Upon its reveal as a gasoline-powered car in 2002, I downloaded all of the wallpapers, combed the specifications, watched the videos, and read the press releases.

Eagerly anticipating a much more stylish mid-engined sports car, I spent way too much time poring over every detail but was fixated on its styling. Shown in the same year people started calling BMW's styling 'flame surfacing', Fétish's curves, courtesy of Sacha Lakic, are exciting and approachable at the same time.

To me, the first Fétish was its peak, no matter how good the follow-up was. Just look at it…

In 2004, Venturi showed the production version and with great fanfare announced to the world that it had created an EV with comparable performance to its gas-powered counterpart…and that it would make electric cars from that point onward. The skeptics balked while Venturi actually delivered.

People (including Venturi) mistakenly call Fétish the first production electric sports car, or a variation of that claim, but it's not really true—and who cares, anyway?