Infiniti, a luxury car brand that we have increasingly questioned the point of, admittedly does concepts well. Past design studies have been both retro and sleek and the automaker’s newest Prototype 10 concept car doesn’t seem like it will be any different.
The ‘70s were a neat time for cars. Everything was shaped like a door-stopper. Like the Maserati Khamsin. The BMW M1. The Lamborghini Countach. And the Ferrari 512S Modulo concept, which, excitingly, had its first drive ever on public roads today.
The car industry has few secrets, at least when it comes to car designs. Any dramatic new vehicle you see debut was usually previewed by a concept car a few years before. So if we know a mid-engine Corvette is due, there’s gotta be some concept car from a couple years back that previews it. And this might be the one.
The Toyota SF-R may have just been a concept when it debuted at the Tokyo Motor Show in 2015, but to us, it was more than that. It was a light, small, entry-level sports car that looked destined for production. Things looked promising. But now, three years later, there’s still no S-FR. What the hell?
Generally, when we think about automotive safety, it involves ways to not drive into people. The truth is, though, life isn’t perfect, and sometimes good people get driven into by cars. If you accept that this happens, you can then try to make a person’s car-impact experience as enjoyable as possible, and the results…
I found a copy of a great old book called Cars That Never Were in a used bookstore, behind a secret door marked with a pair of crossed pistons and reeking of old motor oil and decay. The book is full of interesting prototypes, but one caught my eye especially because of its novel design and engine choice. It’s a 1964…
If a magic horse were to come up to me today and tell me that if I pleasured them, physically, that horse would grant me a wish, I’d have my horse-pleasuring gloves on so fast your eyes would cross and the next thing you know there’d be one satisfied horse, a flash of bright blue light, and me, in 1990s Japan,…
When we look back at the post-WWII automotive designs pouring out of manufacturers, we probably would think of them as “modern” by today’s standards. But at the time, the industry was ready for something fresh, and engineers were ready to deliver. Tons of concept cars showcasing the future appeared at exhibitions…
Arguably one of the most incredible things about the 1950s was the insistence that we could absolutely use this potentially deadly technology in the most wholesome ways to create a really cool car.
There’s something undeniably quaint about the way the industrialized world imagined the future back in the 1950s. Looking at it now, you think less “future” and more “aww, look how retro!” And nothing epitomizes that more than the Astra-Gnome.
There’s a story over at Bloomberg today that highlights the work of an engineer named Zhu Lingyun who believes, if all goes according to plan, he’ll have a two-wheeled electric pod thing on the road in two years. Always two years! Anyway, Zhu’s idea is interesting because it’s actually based off an old Ford concept,…
Underneath this wild Pininfarina-designed body shell sits a Ferrari 512S race car chassis. Built in the early 1970s, this car was toured around the show circuit as a concept for future design elements before it was retired to a life as static art display in the Pininfarina offices. Just four years ago, Ferrari…
In 1970, science fiction was real. We had just landed on the moon, the first Oil Crisis hadn’t hit yet, and it seemed like, just maybe, anything was possible. That’s the world in which the Lancia Stratos HF Zero debuted, the lowest, widest, wildest future-wedge of all. It looked unreal at the time. It looks wilder now.
Back in the 1990s, there was a seemingly endless supply of bonkers concept cars that existed solely to grab attention at auto shows and in the pages of magazines. Some of these concepts were wild enough to end up on childhood bedroom walls, because the street cars weren’t quite exciting enough. When the Mustang Mach…
At motor shows, though usually in Tokyo, automakers from Toyota to Chevy frequently unveil very tiny concepts that, they promise, will definitely be produced some time in the future. Call them pod cars. And yet we still haven’t seen one.
Making a car is expensive, and nobody would want go through the process of building an entire working automobile if they’re not thinking of putting it on sale. And yet here is (or isn’t) the Prodrive P2, an all-wheel drive monster that never even was meant to be bought.
The Beijing Auto Show is on and that means it’s time for luxury carmakers to do what they do best: pontificate about the nature of luxury itself. Maybach took the chance to make a living room. It’s weird.
When we last chatted with you about the Infiniti Q Inspiration concept, we left off with the hope that it would usher in a new era of Infinti production cars. Lord knows Infiniti needs it. And it looks like we’ll be getting some electrified version of it within the next five years.
The Subaru SVX is one of the looniest cars ever put into production: a flat-six luxury coupe with a fighter jet canopy from a company that mostly just sold plain station wagons. But these two sides of Subaru once collided and gave us the Subaru Amadeus. Or, rather, not.
I know that pretty much all of the brands are trotting out electric SUV concepts, but this new Buick Enspire concept thing actually looks pretty sharp. The only crappy thing about it is its name.
