Nine of the best supercar concepts from the 1970s

Arguably Pininfarina’s most famous concept made its debut at the Geneva Motor Show in 1970. Of course it couldn’t move under its own steam. The Modulo might have been built on a 612 Can Am-spec Ferrari 512S chassis, but its V12 engine and gearbox were hollow shells. There to give the illusion of a working powerplant. Our pal Jim Glickenhaus saw to that when he bought the show car off Pininfarina in 2014. Nowadays not only does it have a fully-functioning V12, it’s actually road-legal. And we've driven it.

Just a few months later Bertone hit back with this – the remarkable Stratos HF Zero. Styled by Marcello Gandini and standing just 84cm tall, unlike the Modulo the Zero was a fully functioning prototype, with a narrow-angle 1.6-litre V4 from a written-off Lancia Fulvia.

The purpose of the concept was, in Gandini’s words, “to establish a bridge between Lancia and Bertone”. And that it did. Mr Bertone reportedly took it to a meeting at Lancia’s HQ, on arrival driving under the security barrier instead of waiting for it to open. And lo, the work on the proper Stratos began in earnest.

Image: RM Auctions

Meanwhile in Japan, Mazda was busy with a wedge of its own. The RX-500, which was revealed at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1970, was Mazda’s 50th birthday present to itself (it’d only been building cars for a decade by this point).

Part concept, part engineering test-bed, the RX had a mid-mounted 982cc twin-rotor with 247bhp that could spin to 15,000rpm. It was a lesson in light-weighting (tipping the scales at just 850kg) and had experimental taillights that lit up green when the car was accelerating, amber when it was travelling at a constant speed and red (duh) when it was braking.

Nowadays it lives in the Hiroshima City Transportation Museum.

This Particularly Pointy Thing wears a Maserati badge. Styled by Giugiaro ahead of the 1971 Turin Motor Show (Turin really was Wedge Central in the Seventies), the Boomerang was a one-off concept based on Maserati Bora underpinnings, complete with its 310bhp 4.7-litre V8 and 186mph(ish) top speed.

The interior was especially mad, with a round instrument cluster and steering wheel that rotated around it. There are plenty of pictures on Bonhams’ site. It sold the concept, which is road legal by the way, back in 2015 for just shy of £3million.

Unveiled in Turin (where else?) in 1974, the Lamborghini Bravo was based on the then-current Urraco. And doesn’t it look tremendous? Bertone’s Lamborghini Marzal and Countach concepts had made production, and the styling house had high hopes for the Bravo too. But alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Despite Lambo allegedly clocking over 40,000 miles in a prototype (the Bravo was a one-off, but it’s possible Lambo had a second mule), the decision was eventually taken to scrap the idea.

The Bravo show car remained in Bertone’s possession until it was sold at auction for nearly €600,000 in 2011.

Image: RM Auctions

Minoru Hayashi started building race cars in Japan in the mid-Sixties. Then in 1975 he set up Dome with the intention of building a small number of road-going sports cars to, in part, fund his company’s Le Mans entry. It all hinged on the Zero, which used a 2.8-litre Nissan straight-six, weighed just 920kg and looked… well, like this. Blimey.

Despite its best efforts Dome failed to homologate the Zero for sale in Japan, and was similarly unsuccessful in the States with the federalised Zero P2. So the Zero never went into even limited production. But Dome survived (fans of the JGTC will have heard of it), thanks in no small part to royalties paid by toy companies making “extremely popular” models of its stillborn wedge.

Image: Yonezawa-Shi

Believe it or not, underneath 1972’s BMW Turbo Concept is the chassis from a humble 2002, modified to accommodate a mid-mounted engine. Built to celebrate that year’s Summer Olympics, held in BMW’s home-town of Munich, the Turbo used the same 2.0-litre engine that would later appear in the 2002 Turbo – BMW’s first turbocharged production car.

Notable tech included cutting-edge foam-filled bumpers, an integrated roll cage, ABS, crumple zones and side-impact protection. The Turbo also had an advanced (for the time) radar warning system to warn the driver if they got too close to the car ahead.

Chevy was toying with the idea of doing a mid-engined ‘Vette for decades before it released the C8. How different things might have been if the Aerovette had made production.

Following on from other mid-engined Corvette concepts of the late Sixties/early Seventies, the 420bhp ‘Four Rotor Corvette’ arrived in 1973 to showcase GM’s newfound obsession with the Wankel rotary engine. It was eventually rechristened the ‘Aerovette’ in 1976 (when GM killed its rotary programme after the oil crisis hit) and fitted with a small-block V8 instead. Because in Seventies America, small-block V8s were the economical option.

Allegedly the Aerovette actually got green-lit for production, but Chevy got cold feet and pulled the plug.

The C111 first appeared at the 1969 Frankfurt Motor Show – a fully-functioning Wankel-engined experimental prototype, with a cutting-edge glass-fibre-reinforced plastic body, that looked like no Mercedes the world had ever seen.

13 more would be built over the next few years in all kinds of different configurations. The C111-II, revealed in 1970, had a four-rotor Wankel engine and could do over 180mph. The focus soon swapped to diesels – a C111 oil-burner broke 16 world records in 1976, after averaging 156mph for 60 hours straight. In 1979 the ultimate C111, powered by a 4.8-litre V8, hit 251mph at Nardo.

Nine survive. And we’ve driven one.