Concepts : Car News And Reviews

While most of today’s concept cars envision improvements to the driving experience itself, on occasion vehicles are seen as having a broader impact on one’s lifestyle. That’s the case with this unusual Toyota concept from the early 1970s.

The amphibious Colani Sea Ranger was built on top of a Mercedes-Benz Unimog. Or at least put together using the parts from one; it’s certainly no longer recognizable as a Unimog. The Sea Ranger is part off-road utility vehicle, part camper, and part amphibious watercraft.

In 1969, Mercedes-Benz unveiled a concept car powered by a Wankel rotary engine: the C 111. Built as a test bed for the unusual engine, the first version of the C 111 had a three-rotor unit with an output of 280hp and a maximum top speed of 161 mph.

Throughout the years, BMWs have had certain design elements which are pretty universal – from the blue, black, and white round hood badge to some kind of kidney-shaped grille. One of the more interesting BMW designs I’ve ever seen is the BMW 2002 Tii Garmisch, a one-off vehicle designed by Italian firm Bertone for the German automaker.

I’m already a very big fan of the Hyundai Veloster N. With prices starting below $30,000 for the 275hp model, I think it represents the best performance bang for the buck of any new car you can buy today.

Let’s take a trip back to the 1950s, a time when aviation was on the rise, and rocket ships were the future. This set the perfect stage for the design of sleek and streamlined vehicles, some of which looked like they could launch into space.

I’m here at the 2019 Tokyo Motor Show, meeting with Toyota and Lexus to see what sort of new vehicles they have in the works. A big focus of this year’s show is on the future of mobility, so it’s less about what cars you can buy in 2020, but where technology is headed in the years beyond.

First revealed back in 2013, the Toyota Mirai is innovative in that it’s one of the few consumer vehicles on the road which runs on hydrogen power. Its systems then convert that hydrogen to electricity to drive its motor, and emitting only a little bit of water as its sole tailpipe emission.

Long before Kia put the name to good use, Pontiac took us to the “excitement edge” with its futuristic Stinger. The 1989 Stinger Concept was created as a sporty, recreational vehicle, and revealed just one year after the Pontiac Banshee concept.

Having operated from 1928 to 1961, Chrysler’s DeSoto nameplate is but a distant memory, though the company did manage to turn out quite a few cars during its lifetime. One of the more impressive designs to emerge from DeSoto was the Adventurer II, a concept car shown in 1954.

Traveling to auto shows, we get to see a whole lot of cool and unusual concept cars. They may serve as inspiration for production vehicles, but the majority of them never go into production themselves. Once such concept was the Porsche Tapiro.

Designed back in 1967 for the London Motor Show, the Bertone Pirana (also known as the Jaguar Pirana) was gorgeous 2+2 coupe that started out as a Jaguar E-Type. The car was designed to show that Bertone could match the offerings of Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Ferrari and Maserati.

While most automotive concepts look forward to the future, or at most embrace a few key design attributes of classic cars, this unusual concept car from GM’s Australian Holden division was almost entirely a retro-style hot rod.

Designed by the inimitable Pininfarina, this gorgeous concept car embraced the best of Italian sportscar design, while sporting the almost always daft underpinnings of Fiat’s Abarth division. The one-off prototype was based on the chassis of a Fiat Abarth 2000 Sport Spider, but clearly had a dramatically more impressive body design than its sibling.

Having spent some time behind the wheel of the new 2020 GR Supra, I proclaim myself among the fans of Toyota and BMW’s coupe collaboration. It’s offers up a wonderfully pure driving experience, has an awesome exhaust note, and can powerslide through corners with the best of them.