Nine of the best supercar concepts from the 2010s

Revealed at the Paris Motor Show in 2010, the stunning Jaguar C-X75 featured two diesel turbine engines powering four electric motors, and was initially intended as a design study that would influence future models. But interest was so high in the car that in 2011 Jaguar announced it would build the thing in partnership with Williams Advanced Engineering.

An original run of 250 was planned, complete with a more conventional 1.6-litre supercharged four-cyinder hybrid powertrain. Five prototypes were built, with one even featuring as a Bond villain car for 2015’s Spectre – by which point the whole project had been canned due to the global recession. At least one did make it into private ownership however, as The Stig recently discovered round the Top Gear test track.

Penned by Peugeot’s design chief Gilles Vidal, the 2012 Onyx was intended to be an eco-friendly supercar. Most eye catching of all was the copper body panels, hand beaten by a craftsman from 8.0mm thick sheets into shape, and deliberately left unpainted so that they would oxidise with the air, changing colour from a mirror finish to a dull green over time. We daren’t imagine what state they’re in now…

Inside, the dashboard was made out of squashed newspapers, and while from afar it looked to have a wood-like grain, up close you could see the remnants of printed words and letters. The seats, headlining and door panels were all made of recycled felt, and underneath it got the 3.7-litre diesel from the 908 Le Mans car of 2011, only with added small e-motor and battery too. Well ahead of its time, this thing.

Keen gamers will remember the Mercedes-Benz AMG Vision Gran Turismo, initially developed for Gran Turismo 6 but later developed as a real life model for the 2013 LA Show. 

With its styling inspired by the iconic 300 SL, it got an aluminium spaceframe body, carbon fibre panels, gullwing doors, eight rear tailpipes and a kerbweight of just 1,385kg. Power came from a 5.5-litre twin-turbocharged V8 engine developing 577bhp and 590lb ft of torque for a power to weight ratio of 417bhp per tonne, mated to a seven-speed DCT.

Just five were built, with one even featuring as Bruce Wayne’s plaything in the 2017 film Justice League. Add in the Batmobile and that’s not a bad two-car garage.

In need of a showstopper for the 2014 Paris Motor Show, Volkswagen decided to take its XL1 eco warrior and give it a heart transplant. So out went the then world’s most efficient two-cylinder diesel hybrid, and in went the then world’s most powerful two-cylinder from Ducati’s (which VW had acquired in 2012) Superleggera superbike.

The headline figures were impressive: 1,199cc, 200bhp, 12,000rpm, all somehow attached to a seven-speed DSG. Aided by a 890kg kerb weight and 0.258 drag factor, it saw the XL1 from zero to 62mph in 5.7 seconds on to a 168mph top speed.

Looked wild, too. It measured in longer and wider than the car upon which it was based, but got the same butterfly doors and resin-transfer-moulded tub. Everything pointed to it making production, but less than a year after it was unveiled, it was abandoned because of dieselgate. What could have been.

A two-door, two-seater sports coupe that back then we hoped signalled Mazda’s intention to launch a new range-topping sports car, the RX-Vision was unveiled at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show. It continued the family tree’s front-engine, rear-wheel drive formula, but got a “next generation” rotary engine, which Mazda claimed offered significant improvements in economy, emissions and reliability on those that had gone before – the Wankel engine’s Achilles heel.

Measuring in roughly the same size as a Jaguar F-Type, but mooted as a direct rival to the Porsche Cayman, word was it would produce around 300bhp and weigh in at around 1,300kg. The key ingredients were all there then, with a rumoured launch date of 2017, but that date came and went… and there’s been little word of it since.

Jaw dropping, isn’t it? The Renault Trezor was a two-seater electric couple revealed in all its glory at the 2016 Paris Motor Show. Most interesting of all was the single piece canopy roof, which opened by hinging forward on struts like a clamshell. Wouldn’t have needed to worry about not being able to open the door in any narrow parking spaces in this thing.

A good thing too, because it was also rather large, measuring 4.7m long and 2.1m wide – wider than a Rolls-Royce Phantom. It wore 21in wheels on the front and 22s at the rear, designed so that the gap between the spokes looked like the Eiffel Tower. Power was delivered to all four wheels courtesy of dual electric motors delivering a combined 349bhp/280lb ft. Launch this thing now and it wouldn’t look out of place.

Italian coachbuilder Pininfarina stole the show when it unveiled the H2 Speed at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show, the world’s first hydrogen powered, track only hypercar.

Beneath its three-piece carbon fibre body – the front, the doors and the rear clamshell – and wedged into its carbon fibre chassis lay two side-pod hydrogen tanks, feeding a pair of electric motors primed to deliver 489bhp to the rear wheels. Pininfarina claimed a 0–62mph time of 3.4 seconds and a top speed of 186mph, aided by the 1,420kg kerb weight.

Pininfarina was serious about putting the H2 into production, and reappeared in 2018 with a roadgoing version, but aside from an appearance in Asphalt 9 it disappeared without a trace.

The Porsche 919 Street Concept was conceived in 2017, but only saw the light of day in 2020 when the carmaker removed the padlock from its design studios to reveal a secret collection of secret concept cars.

The spitting image of Porsche’s Le Mans 919 race car and a design exercise to see whether a hypercar based on the technology used in its racer was viable, underneath it retained the carbon monocoque, axles and drivetrain as the race car, complete with 900bhp turbocharged V4 engine and all the hybrid gubbins too.

It wasn’t just a flash in the pan either: Porsche genuinely planned to put it into limited production, but told us it was killed off by the complexity of the hybrid powertrain. It now lives in the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany.

Porsche later built something called the '963'...

The Lamborghini Terzo Millennio – Italian for third millennium – was a futuristic electric concept car developed in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) back in 2017 that would “rewrite the rules on super sports cars”.

How? We’ll start with the looks – we love them, but we’ll let you make your own mind up – but the idea was that the carbon body would act as an energy storage system. By using nanotechnology to thread billions of tiny copper anodes and cathodes into the carbon weave, the body would essentially be able to heal itself. Seriously.

And the super advanced tech didn’t end there. The plan was to use supercapacitors for power in place of standard batteries, allied to a four wheel drive, four wheel motor setup. It also got an autonomous ‘ghost’ mode, to demonstrate the best line on track. Otherworldly.