Quoi? Europeans Turn Renault Twingo into "Cabinets of Curiosities"

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French automaker Renault spiced up the holiday season with some art cars dubbed Cabinets of Curiosities. Based on the Renault Twingo hatchback, the cars' insides were transformed into miniature art exhibits.

The first car, dubbed Twingo 55 FBG, was created by French fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac. It envisions a version of Renault's city car designed for French monarchs of years past, replete with gold-trimmed switchgear, "period-correct furniture", and Victorian-era candleholders. De Castelbajac says, "It should be a cast-iron rule for all candidates in the Presidential elections that they have to travel in a Presidential Twingo."

The Twingo Goes Pop is the brainchild of British singer-songwriter Nicola Roberts, and replaces the rear seats with a recording studio and coffee maker. On the dashboard is an assortment of makeup and other beauty accessories, as well as a gold-trimmed hairdryer and gold-trimmed microphone. Roberts says that in creating the car, "I have strived to blend my dreams and emotions with my personal, very defined vision of reality."

Italian chef Davide Scabin filled his Renault Twingo with his one true love: pasta. True to its name, the Scabin Pasta Twingo has its seats covered with penne pasta, while the dashboard has been converted into cupboards for holding cooking ingredients. Practical, no; mouth-watering, yes. "For me, the car is like cooking," says Scabin. "It is a discovery, a movement, a journey to other people. I see New Twingo as a manifesto, an explosion which expresses the essential values of my work."

Finally, German designer Nils Holger Moorman built the Twingo Reading-Car. An avid literature fan, Moorman wanted to build a "reading room" that would serve as "a personal refuge from which to shelter from the aggression of modern life." That meant a wooden floor, fireplace, expansive bookshelf, and newspaper racks. In addition, the Twingo's trunk has been converted to hold reference books, tea bags, a kettle, and a small gas stove.

Source: Renault

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