The Fisker road show coame to my dealership and I got to drive a pre-production car over the past two days. The car still needs some fine tuning as far as engine noise and throttle pedal calibration is concerned, but overall I am very positive about the car. It is a very, very heavy car at 5200 pounds, but it does have 4 motors and 600 pounds of batteries in the car. The car is very stiff and has a very sporty feeling through the steering wheel. The ride is remarkable considering the jumbo 22 inch wheels and low profile tires. The car has a triangulated strut tower brace and a very little suspension travel due to how low the car is and the lack of tire/fender gap.
But it handles well for it's size and has plenty of grip to tackle a twisty piece of road.
You can drive the car in full battery mode which is called Stealth mode and this gives the car a silent driving experience and almost a large golf cart feel with instant acceleration and decent overtaking ability in this setting. The Karma also has the Sport mode which you toggle by selecting a paddle on the left side of the steering wheel. This mode adds the 2.0 liter 4 cylinder and is the mode that needs some attention from Fisker on the production models. The engine spins and sounds like a vacuum cleaner and the sound and speed of the engine revving is not in step with the speed of travel. With all 403 horsepower the car feels pretty quick, but not super fast. About par with a Honda Civic Si.
The Karma also has a great kinetic recovery system which I was using instead of the 6 piston/4 piston Brembo brakes every time I needed to slow the car. This system can recharge the car's battery up to 65% charge. In fact during the two days and 90 test drives we did the cars were not plugged in at all. We simply filled the cars up with gas and used this system on the freeway at lunch to drive the cars and recharge the batteries. ery cool. The LCD display shows the battery pack being charged or depleted as well as approx range left. The touch screen was very cool looking and worked very well. Decent stereo, nothing like the Evoque system.
Overall the car is beautiful to look at, practical and fun to drive and with some minor fixes this car will be a huge hit. The car was swamped everywhere we drove with people giving the

s up, taking photos and almost running us off the road to get closer to it. At it's price point of $96,000-$110,000 it does not have any real competition as yet. I think I will sell a lot of these cars.