Forget hybrids, hydrogen fuel cells, or diesels. I want my Nucleon!
[en.wikipedia.org]

One knocked my mom up, one stole my first girlfriend, and ...

Well two outta three ain't bad! What you got??

Suzy: Daddy, it's hot in here and why are we stopped in the middle of the desert? I thought we were going to visit Grandma in Virginia.
Dad: Shutup, this stupid navigation system is acting up again. Johnny see if that Gila Monster can give us directions.
Crap- I miss all those neat far out designs.

Hey, don't forget about the Volt, that's a concept, not a production preview. Wait, it's going to be produced you say? I say ha!

Unfortunately at this point in our history the car of the future is either no car or a B.O.V out of Mad Max. The automakers can't be depressing buyers with concepts like that.

Actually, strike that, I would like to see some good post apocalypse concepts. And maybe one particularly ballsy company can show nothing on a rotating stage as their concept of the car of the future. Maybe Chrysler, although they might ruin the concept by producing nothing next year.

I'm torn on this issue because:

1. Nobody likes to be teased by cool and awesome concepts that will never make production.

2. Nobody likes to see watered down pre-production concepts that will actually be produced, only ending up stripped of worthy and distinct characteristics.

((50's narrator voice)) "We're using Nuclear Reactors to dig through the mountainside!"

+ Watch video

@P161911:

Yeah, but what good is a forward-control finned Ranchero is the bed is permanently occupied by a nuclear reactor? And talk about harmful emissions...

Guess I'd have to go with the 1956 Chrysler Dart for cruising, the '60 Plymouth XNR for carving.. The Chrysler Turbine is the shit, but that's a limited-production rather than concept car.

Hey, how do you post a picture? I have a picture of the best/worst concept ever. It was a 79 or 80 Pontiac Firebird WAGON! Polar would drool. The best part was the gullwings on the wagon portion.

[www.indiemonkey.com]

Here's a link to the Firebird Kammback wagon I mentioned in an earlier post that the evil monkey ate. DAMN YOU EVIL MONKEY!

@OldeEnglishD: Have to best the best Pontiac concept ever- a Firebird with an actual function beyond being a rolling "compensator"..

Although I don't know why they couldn't've given it a real hatch...

You mean like this?

If you look at history, the 50's and early 60's were a more optimistic time. Everyone was buying a new TV, refrigerator, house, car (or two) and America was at its zenith. Unfortunately, like the television, Zenith soon turned into "death spiral". Anyway, the concept cars of that time period were, truely, of that time- wild, outrageous, optimistic, sky's-the-limit gumption. 1960 was the peak of American automotive market share/production.

We're a different country now. Tailfins have given way to fuel cells in terms of what's sexy. Everyone has a conscience and nobody is willing to be too daring.

On a different note, interesting how the wheels on that rocket-car are fairly pedestrian. Can you imagine someone from that time period being time-travelled forward 50 years and seeing a set of Dee's on a modern car? I wager they'd be as awed by those rediculous wheels as we are by this rocket car's shape.

A Full House reference, wow. Be careful the doors you open: I have a whole bag of Balki Bartokomous right here.

Well... define the ROI on a turbine-powered concept car for me.

Have to justify the cost to the stockholders, you know.

@UDMan: Thanks, I are computer illiterate

@UDMan: Can you imagine the rattles on that thing if GM had decided to build it? Yikes!

We've been to the moon. That is soo passé.
Now we need to save the planet, no need for rockets on wheels to do that.

I'm cornfused. I thought the complaint here was that we are seeing too many futuristic, unobtainable, pie-in-the-sky concepts that are incredibly cool, but will never be produced. And now His Wertness is writing elsewhere* that we're not seeing enough of them?

*Mr. Wert, you're not thinking of leaving us too, are you?

In one of my automotive fantasies, I come into posession of the complete blueprints for, and somehow manufacturing skill and resources to recreate R. Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion car from the 1930's.

I would have loved to have been old enough to have attended the World's Fair in Chicago and seen that thing in the metal. Of course, that would have made me... dead by now, I suppose.

So much of it is driven now by government regulations and aerodynamic requirements that coming out with something radically different in a concept car vein (sadly) makes no sense. Ever hear the phrase 'all the cars look the same'. Well, there's a reason for that so showing off something you don't have a hope in hell of making...makes no sense. Car companies today bring out a concept and "features" may mimic a later production model. Take a look at the Saleen concept up top in another article. I immediately saw a lot of Lamborghini influences but then again, Saleen may have been driven to that by other factors. Bottom line: car shows are just automotive clinics.

@Bumblebee: Don't be re-dick-o-lus, Cossin Bumblebee!

The future ain't what it used to be.

The upside is that these days we actually GET the toys to play with.

Active charcoal air filters, PlayStation consoles, satellite navigation, radar, night vision, fly-by-wire braking, multiplex wiring, solar-panel cooling, you name it - you can have it. (But not an Espresso machine. Why?)

The car seat was once nothing more than some bent tubes and a strip of canvas (2CV). Now you have side bolsters that seize you by the ass, seats that vibrate and blow hot and cold air up your fundaments, robot arms that pass you your belt and airbags to cosset your squishy bits.

If Harley Earl had designed a car with seats like that in 1952, he would have been labelled a pervert and lobotimised.

The downside is that we now know (and so do they stylists) there's no point in having a 300mph car when there's no place to drive it. There's no point having 0.19 Cd when you're driving a 6.8-litre Triton V10 at an average of 23mph. And there's no point in swoopy bodywork and gullwing doors when the "look" most consumers seem to aspire to is Main Battle Tank.

For the hardcore internet types that don't get out to car shows, there is a ton of stuff online where individuals, groups and small companies show their stuff. Some good, some bad.

This site gets promoted in the Autoblogreen blog but its an interesting competition. And some of the cars do have potential. Suggestion to the Editor when he arrives back at his batcave in Royal Oak. Promote this site once in a while. It may satisfy your car concept craving.

[www.progressiveautoxprize.org]

@FLB: Can you imagine the spike in the birth rate had GM decided to build that? Yikes!

@FreeMan: I guess it's that we're not seeing enough far-out pie-in-the-sky concepts actually being put into production, without being watered down, and living up to their concept promises to save the environment and be safer than the Jaws of Life needed to rescue the survivors from the most grisly of crashes at the 300+mph speeds they can attain on a regular basis, while producing zero emissions, etc. Or something. Whatever. Humans are never satisfied.

@al_beaton: "If Harley Earl had designed a car with seats like that in 1952, he would have been labelled a pervert and lobotimised." Awesome. And it was even more embarrassing for him to have been brought back and hucking Park Avenues.

@LTDScott: Well, feed me garlic and call me stinky! A brother in arms!

I got to see these cars upclose a few years ago in Hilton Head. They were fascinating.

[mybimmer.com]

Many of the cars in India are Turban-powered. Turban, get it? It's because of the hats they wear. Oh man, this stuff just writes itself.

where Uncle Jesse when we need him?

@UDMan:

Looks sort of like a ripoff of the 1966 Ogle Triplex GTS, though the Pontiac would have probably beat the Scimitar in a rust-off competition.

@P161911: just buy the Hot Wheels one!

@sos10: exactly. I miss some of the crazy stuff too- but there's just nowhere to go with them.

mostly it's just fear that we'll make the same kind of crazy predictions we did back then. and as i stated when a similar question was first posted, guys like Moller killed it by defrauding anyone and everything that ever came close to it or reading about it.
but you can still see some crazy stuff in the design competitions (like the one Jalopnik posted at the end of the year last year) and at the Tokyo show.

Well, with CAFE and all... You know how many miles a Bell helicopter engine gets? But then again, having a name like Rolls-Royce can make people envious...