11 of the greatest concept cars of the 2020s... including *that* one

You’ll probably have guessed from the name (which BMW used so successfully to reinvent itself in the 1960s and early 70s) but this will be the first of six or seven all-electric Neue Klasse models that’ll arrive between now and 2027. The first of which is the Top Gear Award-winning iX3.

More efficient motors and new battery cells with 20 per cent greater energy density than the BMW EVs currently on sale. Oh, and we’re told that the saloon you see here will be 25 per cent more efficient overall than the current crop, with 30 per cent more range and 30 per cent faster charging too.

Fine, we’re cheating. It’s from late 2019. But allow it. Tall as today’s Continental GT but longer than a Mulsanne and as spacious as a Flying Spur, Bentley’s 100th birthday present to itself is just massive. The next thing you notice is the grille, which isn’t really a grille at all because the EXP 100 GT – a glimpse of how the Bentley GT of 2035 might look – is of course powered by electricity.

A hydrogen fuel-cell / EV hybrid set-up for drifting, with styling inspired by Hyundai’s 1980s ‘Pony’ concept, plus a smattering of DeLorean vibes? Sign us up. This has to go into production, Hyundai – Korea is counting on you.

The aim here is to get a nice round 1,000km (625 miles) of range. Now the obvious answer to that would be a  mahooosive  battery. With today's tech that'd mean a vast underfloor box, which could only fit under an SUV. The weight and drag would spiral upward, and so would the price. Efficiency would plummet. The EQXX's approach is the opposite. Low weight, low drag, sky-high efficiency. Every part and system has been given the beady eye, looking for savings in weight, aerodynamic drag, friction, heat and electrical resistance. Right down to the very soldering between electronic components.

Of course, the newly electrified Twingo does actually lean on the 1990s original (which never officially made it to the UK) for its style and its funky seat patterns. Underneath it’ll be very 21st Century though, with an as-yet unnamed electric powertrain that’s targeting 6.2 miles per kWh. 

A hearty welcome back to the glorious  Citroen SM via the medium of a gloriously wild concept featuring all the hits:  part-closed rear wheels, a squat, stretched silhouette and those rectangular lights at either end. It's also literally called the DS Tribute, built to help showcase  the marque’s future models.

The Up returns! This EV city car will cost from around £18k, targets a 155-mile range and crucially has the cute-yet-monolithic looks that made VW’s outgoing petrol city car such a deserved hit. Fingers crossed for a GTI version…

Say hello to the Bentley… wait no, that’s not right. It’s the Genesis X Gran Coupe, a giant two-door grand tourer spun off the G90 lux-barge platform that you haven’t heard of. Because no-one buys one. But this? We’d make an exception for this… Korea’s Conti GT, if they’ve got the minerals to make it.  

Originally dreamt up back in 2013 but never green-lit for production, the 919 Street was just that – a Le Mans-winning hypercar for the road. (In 2025, Porsche would of course make one of its 963 Le Mans hypercars 'road legal', too...)

A bittersweet concept, in light of recent news. Named after the ‘0 Series’ Shinkansen bullet trains that revolutionised high speed rail travel with a clean sheet approach, this was apparently a close-to-production look at Honda’s Tesla Model S rival: a low-slung, ultra-streamlined family saloon with slimline batteries and clever weight-saving throughout. A new Accord then. Sadly, we now know Honda's spectacularly binned the entire range, and it's a staggering U-turn from a manufacturer on the ropes. Here's why.

We had to go there. Well, if a concept car’s chief job is to get people talking / ranting / frothing with swivel-eyed fury, then the big pink panther here certainly did the job – possibly the most infamous concept car of the 21st Century so far. Now they just need to stick the landing on actually building it.