'Not daft enough': this transforming roadster concept was a fail, and here's why

The problem with the Presto wasn’t that it was too daft. It wasn’t daft enough. The unmistakable handiwork of the Swiss mavericks at Rinspeed, it attempted to solve that age-old riddle of ‘small car, easy to park/big car, fits more people’ with the aid of an ingenious extending wheelbase. Yep, it stretched.

A central electric motor elongated the Presto’s floorpan on the fly, transforming it from two-seat roadster into capacious four-seat roadster at the push of a button.

FOTC has no issue with this. FOTC is all here for transforming cars. The problem with the Presto was that it just didn’t transform enough. It extended by a grand total of 750mm, thus in fact transforming from ‘two-seater’ into a ‘two-seater with small amount of space behind for very uncomfortable rear passengers’.

No doubt there were solid technical reasons for such a modest elongification. But the Presto didn’t need to worry about solid technical reasons. It was a concept car! It was never going to be built! If FOTC’s designing a transforming concept car, it’s designing one that transforms from Smart Fortwo to Taylor Swift tour bus. Realistic? Physically possible? Doesn’t matter! It’s a concept!

Further proof: the Presto’s mooted powerplant wasn’t an onboard plutonium reactor or even sonorous V8. It was a clattery 1.7 diesel. Again, it’s a concept, lads. If we’d wanted disappointing early Noughties realism, we’d have gone to Vauxhall.