High-concept nutjobs
Posted by Tom Ford at 10:10AM on Thursday 11 January, 2007 12 Comments
I didn't go to Detroit.
No reason particularly, except that last year I fell off a bridge, caused a PR person to have a fairly awful head wound (looked great under COBO's arena on the stand the next day) and tried to walk the four miles to my hotel at 4am through cracktown USA with a broken ankle.
While trying to give Michigan time to recover, I couldn't help but be swamped in all the Detroit concept metal, and I started thinking about concept cars.
I always get ludicrously excited about this stuff, the things that'll never make production in a million years either because they physically wouldn't be able to move on 26-inch chrome rims with 1/2-inch ground clearance, or that otter-nipple leather and teak interior valet cases simply don't make it to market because the car would cost a billion dollars and it's hard to convince the public to pay that for a Hyundai.
But then I started thinking; what do they actually do? Well, after careful consideration I've come to the following conclusions. Of course concepts are there to generate interest, column inches and brand PR. But there are various subdivisions of concept, and they tend to be more confusing; you have your high-concept nutjobs that allow a designer who's been drawing door cards for six years free reign to express himself.
Thus you get an amphibious flying car that you operate from a genital touch screen. Stuff that has no relevance whatsoever to human space, that merely gives you an idea of what drugs the designer has been ingesting in the past 24 hours. Some don't even have wheels. 'Nuff said.
Then you have the high-fashion, low-concept stuff that's got a maybe/ish/Batman attitude to reality. There's a car under there somewhere - often utilising the same company's Le Mans V12 with 1,300bhp mounted under the driver's seat and both gullwing and scissor doors. They also have the manufacturer's badge plonked on the ends. Think Peugeot 907 RC.
This is Vivienne Westwood catwalk show material - it will never, ever make it to the streets, and if it ever did, it'd be out of fashion within the hour. Nice to look at, but as relevant as an Amish internet café.
Then you have close-concepts. These look, smell and feel like real cars. But they aren't. They get your jaw dropping just enough to make you think that the brand is actually quite funky, so that they can give a bit of positive spin to the beige shitboxes they currently produce.
Everyone does this. It's like a disease. People will argue that the side repeater design may make an appearance on the 2050 version of an as-yet-unannounced supercar, but then maybe it won't, because we'll all be too old to care, or actually dead.
Then there's the car they don't bother to give a silly name to, that might just spawn something that looks vaguely like it that you and I will be able to drive. Of course the real car will have smaller wheels, more ride height, a higher roof, less width, plastic wheelarches and about as much romance as a cutlery set.
But at least we can dream with some hope of it coming at least a little true...
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12 Comments for "High-concept nutjobs"
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Unfortunatly to true. If only every car lived up to it's concept version. The world's roads would be much more aesthetically pleasing. If all concepts were forced to be made on the same budget the acctual cars are then maybe they wouldn't be so outragous, but then no-one would look forward to launches so much and the world would be much more depressed. So maybe immpossible concepts arn't such a bad thing.
How could you have caused a PR person to have a fairly awful head wound?
Mr Ford is right. What is the point of the concept car. Unless you can drive it off and take it for a good old thrash, then what are they really proving other than that they are cabable and culpable wasting man hours and materials?
Good old Fordy is right. They seem to have no purpose except for collecting the drool of a few hundred people at a motor show. Make the cars instead of wasting our time.
I guess concepts are a way to let designers do what they thought they would do when they chose to be designers in the first place.
I concur with grease donkey, what exactly did you do to the PR man?
Don't any of you remember the honda civic concept car! The production version has barely changed from the concept, triangular exhausts, space ship door handles. All those things were kept. Yes it may have lost some real world applicants like old fashioned rear suspension and bad rearward visibility but apart from that its a fantastic car which is almost identical to the concept!
Concept cars are great! They make the normally boring stands at motor shows actually worth looking at, i mean if there wasnt a bright green, 4x4, racer, with one seat and no roof would you really want to look at the Kia stand? No you wouldn't. Even though you know if u wanted to buy the car for the road the only thing it would have in common is the light bulbs in the head lights. But do we really care, if they make u go WOW, make you day at the Kia stand worthwhile surely there worth it?
Although I agree with most of what has been said above, alfa romeo has stayed quite true to a couple of its concept cars, namely the brera and the 8c competizione
Concept cars are not useless, not useless at all. For me at least, it reminds me of the days when i was a yay-high tike, playing with scaled down bburago model cars. I want to be able to experience that same feeling when I'm 25, 35, 55 etc. I want to be able to feel like a kid.
You may be disappointingly right though, when you mention that production vehicles rarely get a 'concept treatment' and often create more expectations than actual realizations.
Head wounds...
OK, so the lovely man in question happened to follow me in jumping over what I thought to be a low wall, which turned out to be not quite so low. I think it might have been an overpass. Ahem.
As I landed, I immediately shouted "Don't jump!" (actually I said "Ow" and swore a bit first) only to be greeted by my friend flying down towards me.
He landed almost on his feet and then headbutted the ground with some force. He knocked himself out for a bit. I thought he was dead. Then we walked home through Detroit.
Our driver looked at us in disbelief the next morning, then came to the conclusion that we weren't robbed or attacked because we looked as if we'd already been turned over - me limping, half-carrying a man bleeding from the head.
Say what you like about big nights out, I won't forget this one...
Just remember what Steve Jobs said about concept cars.
'You know how you see a see a show car and it's really cool,' he says. 'And then four years later you see the production car and it sucks? And you go, 'What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory!'...'
Remember the Brera! a 4 litre V8 concept with perfet proportions, a 3 litre production car with dumpy styling compromised by plonking it on a boggo floorpan.
Remember the Renault Avantime? That was a concept that they went ahead and made. I waited 3 years til I could afford one. It is true to the concept car ideal: flawed in many ways, nowhere near as practical as my previous car with fairly poor handling BUT there is nothing else like it for driving experience (especially with all 4 windows and roof down)