Four-Wheel Fantasy

From fierce to eco-friendly, concept cars are the automakers’ crowdsourced R&D.

- Robert Ross

The history of concept cars begins in earnest in the 1950s, but for context you need to head a little further back in time. As the US lurched out of the Great Depression, a middle class emerged, sufficiently affluent to afford automobiles in greater volumes. The look of a car quickly became its most salable feature. New styles sold new cars so frequent updates became essential to moving metal. With the outbreak of World War II, car manufacturing worldwide trickled to a halt but resumed with a vengeance in 1946, and by 1950 the race to capture brand-loyal customers was on.

Dream machines came into their own, with international motor shows attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors worldwide to see the latest vehicles and to get a glimpse of the future. Manufacturers were only too eager to whet these appetites with concept cars that explored new aesthetic and technology trends. Some were evolutionary, others so outlandish they could not possibly be mass produced. The boldest concepts established manufacturers such as General Motors as visionaries, at the same time gauging just how much innovation the public would actually park in their driveways. But while early concept cars were often freewheeling fantasies sketched in the studio, today’s concept cars are informed by a sophisticated mash-up of engineering data, focus groups, shareholder profits and all manner of global emissions and safety regulations.