The World Would Be A Better Place If Detroit Had Built These Concept Cars

Based on GM’s successful Kappa platform (Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky), this Nomad concept was essentially production-ready. It was a rear-wheel drive compact five-seater with handling chops hoping to beat BMW’s Mini at its own game.

The Nomad had a removable rear roof panel and a folding tailgate that the rear window rolled down into. With folding rear seats, this compact runabout could have carried some pretty big loads, perhaps even a grandfather clock ala GMC’s infamous Envoy XUV.

Detroit hasn’t ever truly produced a hypercar. You can argue about the Ford GT all you want, but at the end of the day that’s fighting with 911s and V8 Ferraris, not Carrera GTs and Enzos. Chrysler’s mid-engine four-turbo AMG-sourced-V-12 monster could have absolutely changed the American supercar game. This 2004 concept made it as far as the completely operational prototype stage, and allegedly could have taken the 250 mph throne before the Bugatti Veyron was even born.

This sub-3,000 pound monster was constructed largely of carbon fiber and rode on an aluminum honeycomb monocoque to save weight. It would have been an expensive proposal for Chrysler to push through, costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars in development, but that’s the cost of having a halo car in your showroom. Chrysler barely has any cars in its showroom today, but the ME Four-Twelve might have changed the brand’s trajectory. Allegedly it would have been cheaper to produce than the Mercedes SLR McLaren, and the Daimler half of then-Daimler-Chrysler wasn’t happy about it.

Speaking of world-beating quad-turbo V12 American concepts, Ford beat Chrysler to the punch by nearly a decade with the 1995 GT90 concept. OK, so it’s mostly Jaguar XJ220 underneath, and the running concept was limited to 400 horsepower and 40 miles per hour, but it looks absolutely stunning and could have given the world a new speed idol to worship.

Ultimately the concept was killed because Ford figured it would need to charge around $3 million per car to break even on the project. The world just wasn’t ready for a car that expensive in 1995. It was a hypercar before its time.

Detroit tried many times to build an exotic hypercar, and GM’s shot at the title happened in 2002, after the Ford and just before the Chrysler. Unlike the GT90 and ME Four-Twelve, Caddy’s Cien didn’t need a quartet of turbochargers to get its V12 to 750-horsepower. The car was destined to be built in the UK at either Tom Walkinshaw’s place, or Prodrive (which assembled the running prototype for GM).

At the time of its creation, GM determined that it could build around 300 examples of the Cien per year and sell them for around $200,000 each. GM President Mark Reuss, then chief of GM Performance Division, told Autoweek that an internal review determined the market wasn’t ready for a $200,000 Cadillac. Even a mid-engine V12 Cadillac.

Instead of this we got the XLR.

Let’s make it a quartet of American Hypercars that could have been. The Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor was a lightweight and aerodynamic concept built on a Huffaker race car chassis with a 440-horsepower twin-turbocharged version of the famed Mopar 2.2 liter (tuned by Cosworth) under the rear clamshell. This car was designed from the outset with 200 miles per hour in mind. If it had made production, it might have beat the Ferrari F40 to that number by six years!

While the car was initially a one-off for the car show circuit and to be used as a pace car for Indy, five additional cars were later assembled for use in the Charlie Sheen vehicle “The Wraith.”

This 2011 concept not making production still hurts my heart. This compact four-seat rear-wheel drive coupe was aimed at a youth market with a price tag under $20,000 and a fuel-efficient 150-horsepower 1.4-liter Ecotec turbo with eAssist mild hybrid help. Built on the great Alpha platform, which underpinned the Cadillac ATS and Chevrolet Camaro.

This could have been an opportunity to revive the ethos of the original Chevrolet Nova, a fun compact for the youth market. It might have turned Chevrolet’s fortunes in the 2010s, and brought a new generation of enthusiast buyers into dealerships. You know, if it was as good as it looked.

Another Alpha platform concept that should have been built was the Buick Avista. This incredible machine could have turned Buick into something new altogether. With a 400-horsepower turbocharged 3-liter V6 and some more comfort-oriented Grand Touring suspension tuning on the ATS-V Coupe and Camaro SS platform, this could have been a bargain Aston Martin with even better styling.

GM considered putting the Avista into production as a Buick halo car, and the public fanfare for the car’s design was a big push in that direction. It was never made totally clear why, but Buick brass ultimately determined to leave the Avista as a concept.

In the 1960s Ford was in the middle of a Total Performance revamp, which would set it up well for the decade. The company was looking for ways to introduce performance to all of its cars, and designer Phil Clark was tasked with a project to make the European-only front-drive Ford Cardinal compact more fun. Rather than deal with the limitations of front-drive, Clark took the 1.5-liter Taunus V4 engine and transaxle and moved them to the rear wheels of a two-seater sports car.

While this concept had very little to do with what the Mustang would eventually become, it could have sparked a mid-engine revolution from an American automaker. Or it could have died an inauspicious death like the Fiero did in the 1980s. The world will never know.

The Jeep Mighty FC concept was always intended to be a fun project for the annual Easter Jeep Safari, but it’s just too cool not to be included in this conversation. It was meant to evoke, but not ape, the iconic Brooks Stevens Forward Control model from the 1950s, while giving the truck a thoroughly modern design inside and out.

Without the economies of scale that come with market production, Jeep estimates it cost about a quarter million dollars to build this monster, including portal axles and massive off-road rolling stock. There’s almost certainly no way it would pass modern crash standards, but it’s just so damn cool. I want one.

The 2008 North American International Auto Show was a big one for Dodge, as it saw the unveiling of the production-ready Circuit EV. Gas prices were about to crest $3 per gallon for the first time, and having just separated from Daimler, Chrysler was looking for something to set its brands apart.

The Dodge Circuit was an all-electric sports car based on the Lotus Europa S. It promised 150 miles of range and 268 horsepower with 295 lb-ft of torque. Unlike most modern EVs, this one was pretty lightweight at 2,650 pounds. Apparently it drove pretty damn well, too! Oh how I wish this had been built!

Tesla had shown its Lotus-based Roadster concept to an invitation-only crowd in July of 2006, and had started delivering production Lotus Elise-based models in January of 2008. The Dodge was a bit larger than the Tesla, and made use of a smaller battery to bring the price down. Chrysler talked a big game, saying the Circuit EV would be “tens of thousands less” than the Tesla.

“The Dodge EV sets a new standard for what can be expected in electric-drive vehicles,” Lou Rhodes, head of Chrysler’s ENVI division said at the time. “The electric-vehicle technology enables a fun-to-drive performance sports car and helps redefine the vision of an environmentally responsible vehicle for the Dodge brand.”

This turn toward more fuel efficient vehicles was meant to be an effort to appease congress as Chrysler asked for bailout money in the face of the 2008 economic recession. In order to get the $15.3 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout, Chrysler promised “500,000 electric drive vehicles” by 2013. Shortly after receiving the bailout money, Chrysler disbanded the ENVI division and the Circuit EV—along with other BEV and PHEV concepts—was dead.

Prior to its disbanding, Plymouth was building some of the most innovative and interesting machines in the Daimler-Chrysler portfolio. The Prowler was a visually ludicrous machine, and the upcoming PT Cruiser (which was pushed to the Chrysler brand after Plymouth’s demise) promised huge sales. In 1998 the brand decided it needed a compact two-seater sports car to compete with the wildly successful Toyota MR Spyder, Porsche Boxster, and Mazda Miata.

Using the brand’s venerable 2.4-liter four-cylinder, Plymouth stuck a turbocharger on, and shoved it behind the driver compartment with a 5-speed manual attached. To keep weight and cost down, the body panels were crafted from PET plastics. Ultimately it weighed around 2,700 pounds, and that engine later produced as much as 265 horses in the Dodge SRT-4. A production version of this car could have likely undercut the then-$40,000 Boxster on price and demolished it at the track.

If General Motors had wanted to make the Corvette an internationally-respected nameplate in the early 1990s, it could have just pushed the mid-engine, 650-horsepower, all-wheel drive, four-wheel steering, active suspension CERV III concept into production. This was a proper exotic that could completely demolish Porsche’s 959 from just a few years earlier. It was maybe the most advanced supercar of its day, but sadly never made production.

The Lotus-engineered 32-valve 5.7-liter DOHC engine, which was pushed into production with the ZR-1, wasn’t enough for the CERV III. This car tacked on a pair of Garret turbochargers to that engine and made 650 ponies. With all-wheel traction and active suspension, the car managed a 0-60 time of 3.9 seconds, and could pull 1.1 lateral G on the skidpad.

At the time it was produced, GM expected it to run around $300,000. Considering a standard Corvette was $32,000, and a ZR-1 just shy of double that, it was decided that the car wouldn’t be made. This kind of thing just proves that General Motors always could build stuff like this, but didn’t. If they wanted to, they would.

If you want a style-forward concept that could theoretically be produced for the mass market, look no further than Ford’s now-iconic 021C concept. It was named after the Pantone code for this shade of orange, designer Marc Newson’s favorite color.

The inside looks like an Ikea catalog mixed with a Playmobil set. It’s a design masterpiece, and none of this is particularly exotic or hard to manufacture. Some of the fun would probably have to be killed in the name of bean counting, but despite fanfare and awards raining down on the car, it never made it that far.

Early in Cadillac’s history, it was absolutely world-class. This was a brand regularly taking the European luxury producers to task on power, comfort, and style alike. The Sixteen concept could have brought the company back to its roots, delivering a car that had the capability to beat the Rolls and Maybachs of its day.

This super luxury flagship could have been the revival that Cadillac needed in the early-2000s. And it did it the way only Americans know how to do, with displacement. The 13.6-liter V-16 engine pushed around 1000 horsepower and 950 torques, sufficient to move the 5,000 pound luxo barge in quiet comfort. With cylinder deactivation tech, the car was allegedly capable of 17 miles per gallon on the highway.

Wayne Cherry, the retired vice president of GM Design who led the Sixteen design project. “The Sixteen had to have a presence. We wanted it to be the ultimate expression of Cadillac; to reinstate Cadillac as a world leader in design and technology as a reminder of the heritage of Cadillac.”

I guess, in a way, we’re finally getting a version of this car with the new electric Celestiq.

This large Mustang-based 600-horsepower sedan is what Ford should have built instead of the Taurus. In 2007 this machine dropped and it completely blew me away. It was like an even more stylish take on the Chrysler 300, and I loved it then. I still love it now.

“The Interceptor concept is a sedan, but with the heart and soul of a performance car,” Freeman Thomas, director of Ford’s North American strategic design department

Part of what makes this concept’s demise so disappointing is that it was such an easy lay up for Lincoln. With throwback styling to take advantage of the trend, the Lincoln Mark X was mechanically identical to the Ford Thunderbird. This could have been a good one. Dammit Lincoln!