subject: Exactly What Are Concept Cars [print this page] For a long time now people have been fascinated by what amazing vehicles can be discovered in motor shows across the world. The vehicles that cause people to stop and take another glance are not often the cars they end up owning, but instead are cars that the builders have developed purely to astound the buyers, test reaction and feature future ideas, and of course try and make sure their name just a little more memorable then the next, these cars are called concept cars.
Concept cars began life during the late 1930s when Harley Earl, a General Motors designer, penned a car not for building, but purely to display how a car might be in the future, this concept car was called the Buick Y Job.
Harley Earl continued to design and represent such vehicles all through his career with the concept car phenomenon really catching hold in the 50s. Obviously the concept cars that Earl and other designers designed were not meant to be produced, but were simply a test in what may be achievable in a production vehicle at some point in the future.
Concept cars usuallynever make it to production themselves, but they regularly have features that eventually do make it to manufactured models, and sometimes a complete car will be built that has clear common areas with the concept car that was its basis usually a few years before.
Given the freedom of not needing to be worried with safety aspects, fuel consumption , weight, practicality and cost of manufacturing, the concept car stylist can allow his creativity to run wild, and that is why we regularly see some concept cars that look like they suit a different time entirely and obviously will never see the light of day as a production vehicle.
Designs often have layouts that break away from traditional vehicle designs, sliding or gullwing doors, strange passenger layouts, abstract shapes and lots of other styling elements that are not to be found in regular production cars.
Plainly, concept cars are more or less an imaginative take on that which might be possible in future car styling, and many concept cars try to smudge the lines between what would be expected in the usual vehicle we purchase in the forecourts and concept cars with impossibly out of the question styling or functionality.
While the vast majority of concept cars will not get close to production, there are the occasional efforts that give something to what we drive on our streets, and its the thrill of spotting something amazing, that in a different era could be a real option, that keeps both concept car designers, and the viewing public, both absolutely hung up on concept cars.
