The 2016 Los Angeles Auto Show is going on right now and the automotive journalism community is collectively obsessing over the current crop of vaporware being paraded through the convention center, with booth attendants struggling to keep up with the drool constantly falling on the freshly painted sheetmetal and carbon fiber. In case you’re unable to tell from my tone so far, I’m less enthralled with concept cars than your regular auto journalist. They’re often beautiful, fast, interesting and host advanced tech missing from any production car - but they’re almost all completely unattainable. Concept cars get hopes up, they build interest and dash it in equal measure, with very few ever seeing the light of day after rolling off a production line. Concept cars, for petrolheads, are the ultimate tease.
But unlike some others, I do think they have their place in the automotive world. The problem for automotive enthusiasts is, concept cars aren’t meant for us. So here’s a comprehensive list of people for whom concept cars actually serve a purpose.
Designers
Most obviously, concept cars provide designers with an opportunity to stretch their creative legs, ignoring things like “safety,” “practicality” and sometimes “physics” in an effort to prove that they are good at what they do and provide value to a company who normally pay them to fill showrooms and driveways with much blander fare. Companies frequently throw cash at designers to dream up the next hot thing, with varying degrees of success and varying intent to ultimately build the resulting vehicles.
Honestly, giving designers the freedom to create concept cars is entirely fair. As a marketer and designer myself, I completely understand the frustration with being handcuffed by regulation, guidelines and the whims of tasteless corporate overlords. For being forced to create the Dodge Avenger, those designers earned themselves the right to at least a few Viper variants.
Engineers
Whereas production vehicles are generally a collaboration between engineers, designers and marketers who determine what kinds of vehicles the market demands, concept cars also allow engineers free reign to innovate some truly ridiculous things. Whether they’re non-standard doors, cockpits that open from the windshield back or a wildly powerful rotary motor with no hope of seeing life in an actual engine bay, concept cars are playgrounds for engineers.
And they should be allowed such freedom. Despite their flaws, do you think Falcon doors would’ve ever seen the light of day if not for such a positive response on the concept Model X? Sometimes, we don’t know what we’re missing out on until some engineer has a crazy idea and the canvas to apply that exact idea in a very public venue for review. For innovation alone, we still need concept cars.
Executives
Cadillac Escala and accompanying executive, photo courtesy Motor Trend
Apart from the occasional innovations that find their way into production vehicles, concept cars are almost exclusively luxury items for manufacturers, and the ability of a company to consistently churn out design studies with no hope of seeing a showroom can sort of be a measure of the company’s wellbeing. Concept cars are not cheap to make, and to have money to blow on the development of something purely “nice to have” surely indicates that the company’s executives are leading the company to see such excessive projects that they have some left to burn. Concept cars are great for claiming bragging rights in a crowded field fighting for declining sales.
Marketers
Before the Cascada, Continental and, more relevantly for the sake of this argument, the Avista, when was the last time you heard anything positive about Buick in the media? Concept cars give marketers a hot embargoed property to peddle to the automotive media, a shiny new toy to point at when the rest of their work primarily focuses on making compact crossovers slightly more attractive than their competitors. A key metric for marketers and public relations personnel is “impressions,” a term indicating the estimated number of eyeball pairs that sees the company’s name, product and key messages somewhere.
Whereas it’s tough to come up with something new to say about the Kia Soul (White Tiger Special Edition, really?), concept cars provide marketers something new and exciting to push out in splashy photos and verbose press releases which, via wire services, regularly generate more than 2,300,000 impressions. Concept cars help marketers meet their targets and assist in reinforcing every car manufacturer’s goal of being regarded as a progressive, innovative company constantly producing interesting new models, whether or not it’s true.
Marketers can also provide input on the creation of concepts, identifying sales trends or market niches not currently being met. Concept cars can provide marketers a good measure of the enthusiasm for potential vehicles and their viability as production vehicles. As we’ve seen with Buick, the Cascada and Continental both received the green light not just because there was a market for them, but because they were both positively received as concepts. What’s disappointing is the Avista, which certainly received favorable feedback, will likely never see production, simply because it would eat its Camaro sibling’s lunch. And therein lies the greatest frustration for enthusiasts.
Why Should We Care?
Despite being teased with some tasty forbidden fruit, the world still needs concept cars, as torturous as they can be for most of us. Concept cars are an indicator that passion still exists in the people on the inside of car manufacturers, and there are people just like us - who love speed, style and new tech - responsible for creating new products. Though the next Supra may not look anything like any of the concepts we’ve seen paraded about in the past 20 years, there are still vocal factions inside the factories pushing companies to make them a reality. It’s not just us fighting for fun, interesting cars, we have operatives on the inside as well. We may not get another Supra any time soon, but we got the RC-F and IS-F (not to mention
LFA), so good things can come from development and innovation.
Even if they don’t see the light of day, it’s comforting to know that not everyone out there is trying to make the next Chevy Cavalier, and that all those people for whom concept cars mean something care enough to continue making them. So try to get over the fact that we’ll never be able to drive a Mazda Furai and just remember that its existence at all means there are still things we have to look forward to from people who care as much as we do.
Authored by
Devlin Riggs