Words Andy Leuterio
Concept cars are important to car manufacturers. Far from just being expensive eye-candy for gearheads, they
represent the know-how of a company's engineers and designers. Free from the constraints of mass production
considerations and focus group findings, they show us the vision and creativeness of a car company.
Concept cars are "dream machines." Engineers and designers work hand in hand to come up with their interpretations
of what people will want in a car for tomorrow. Or what they think people should want, because people's preferences
are often formed on the basis of group dynamics and economic situations as much as by individual tastes.
Concepts can be whimsical or truly relevant, a radical proposal or a development of an existing platform. A car company
may create a concept and hint at possible mass production, in a way getting valuable clues as to how a new model slated for
production can be tweaked depending on the concept car's reception by both critics and potential buyers.
Or it may create one but have no intention of ever building it for the mass market, strutting its wares just to tell the world
and its competitors what it can come up with. The very first, true concept car was the 1938 Buick Y-Job, created by the Art
and Color Section of General Motors headed by the flamboyant Harley Earl. For while boutique coachworks in America were
already crafting handmade one-offs as early as the '20s, and carmakers were already creating experimental prototypes by the
1930s, the Y-Job was much more than an experiment or a custom car.
Its aircraft-inspired shape and futuristic technology such as a power convertible top, electric windows, and hidden headlights
pointed to the future. The Y-Job was built to point to the next few decades.
Italian design houses like Pininfarina, Bertone, Ghia and Giugiaro, on the other hand, create concept cars as 3-dimensional
advertisements. Because they primarily exist as outsourced creative teams for automotive giants like Fiat, Ford and General
Motors, their creations are meant to catch the eye of these companies so that they can be tapped for volume projects.
Some concepts make a splash when they debut at a prestigious motor show, but nothing more. Perhaps they're too radical for
their time or even the near future; perhaps they would just be too expensive to mass produce. Concepts like Pininfarina's
Ferrari-based Modulo, Giugiaro's 1988 Aztec, and many more bask in the media limelight for a few months, and then retire
to a life of display at a corporate museum.
Other concepts do make it to production, however. Dodge's outrageous Viper began as a concept. At a time when Chrysler was
suffering from lackluster reviews and churning out unexciting K-car derivatives while Ford's Taurus and Mercury Sable were
garnering strong sales and positive reviews, its debut of the Viper at the 1989 Detroit Motor Show was the equivalent of a
cabaret act in the middle of an insurance sales pitch. Emboldened by the international adulation and clamor for a production
version, Chrysler green-lit the Viper, paving the way for more concepts that would also see production, such as the PT Cruiser
and Prowler.
Says Larry Edsall in the book Concept Cars (2003, Barnes & Noble), "Ever since [Harley Earl's] arrival in Detroit, concept cars
have been as much about show business as about auto business, as much about sex appeal as they are about technological
innovation, and in many respects new technology is the motor that drives the concepts. Concept cars, says one auto designer,
are three-dimensional question marks on wheels that ask, 'What if?'"
