Several months ago, fellow Celsias contributor Steve Caratzas had communicated his personal disappointment over the broken promise of personal jetpacks, the Sean Connery-era James Bond standard of cool. I admit that when I was a child I had also operated under the assumption that by the year 2000, the skies would be filled with jetpacks. The year is now 2007 and my feet remain firmly - and regretfully - planted on the ground. I drove to the grocery store earlier today and impressed nobody. Now, if I had arrived by jetpack I may not have been greeted as a liberator, but would it have been too much to have expected flowers and candy?

To fill the void that the jetpack absence has created, I have created a system of rating automobiles and buildings by a duel criteria:

1. How environmentally-friendly are they?
2. What would James Bond think of them?

Green concept cars are always dicey propositions in that they rarely seem to move past the "concept" stage, but they generate some positive press for the maker, and this can obviously raise a bit of mistrust in the cynics among us. Still, a secret agent can dream, can't he?

At the 2007 Geneva Motor Show, Hyundai rolled out the QarmaQ. Yahoo! Autos sez:

One of the QarmaQ's key features is its innovative use of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles to create a large portion of the vehicle's skin. GE says the use of plastics, instead of more traditional metal and glass, gives the vehicle a 130-pound weight savings. That weight loss equates to 20 gallons a year savings in gas, not to mention fewer plastic bottles clogging up the local landfill. These numbers are nothing to scoff when you think of all the cars on the road.

The Green theme extends further as the vehicle use less paint and other chemicals that create massive amounts of greenhouse gases. Hyundai said some of the production techniques used in the QarmaQ could roll out beginning with the 2008 model year. - Yahoo Autos

007 would love the look of this one for the most part. Sporty and futuristic to be sure, but the transparent panels on the doors may reveal more than James wants the world to see. And the WWJD (What Would James Do) question of the day is, would Bond be comfortable driving a car which has a name that he doesn't know how to pronounce?

And about that name… Hyundai's story is that the QarmaQ derives its name from traditional Inuit dwellings, constructed from earth, whalebone and animal skins. Great job Hyundai, naming a futuristic sports car after a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Alaska, Greenland, the Canadian territories of Northwest Territories and Nunavut, the province of Quebec and the northern part of Labrador. If it's good enough for the Inuit, it's gotta be good enough for James Bond.

Here's something else that makes one wonder about Hyundai's commitment to the project: In the official Hyundai press release for the QarmaQ, one of the major headings is blatantly misspelled. Human error is understandable, but this is the main press release for a product from a major auto maker. And it's not an obscure error that's buried somewhere in the text, it's actually a one word headline. In bold. That's right, the only word in the line, and it's in bold. The erroneous word?

JetPack Rating? 2 JetPacks (out of a possible 5)