Un texte très amusant (mais en anglais) qui explique à quoi sert (?) un concept car :
High-concept nutjobs
Posted by Tom Ford at 10:10AM on Thursday 11 January, 2007 8
I didn't go to Detroit.
No reason particularly, except that last year I fell off a bridge, caused a PR person to have a fairly awful head wound (looked great under COBO's arena on the stand the next day) and tried to walk the four miles to my hotel at 4am through cracktown USA with a broken ankle.
While trying to give Michigan time to recover, I couldn't help but be swamped in all the Detroit concept metal, and I started thinking about concept cars.
I always get ludicrously excited about this stuff, the things that'll never make production in a million years either because they physically wouldn't be able to move on 26-inch chrome rims with 1/2-inch ground clearance, or that otter-nipple leather and teak interior valet cases simply don't make it to market because the car would cost a billion dollars and it's hard to convince the public to pay that for a Hyundai.
But then I started thinking; what do they actually do? Well, after careful consideration I've come to the following conclusions. Of course concepts are there to generate interest, column inches and brand PR. But there are various subdivisions of concept, and they tend to be more confusing;
You have your high-concept nutjobs that allow a designer who's been drawing door cards for six years free reign to express himself.
Thus you get an amphibious flying car that you operate from a genital touch screen. Stuff that has no relevance whatsoever to human space, that merely gives you an idea of what drugs the designer has been ingesting in the past 24 hours. Some don't even have wheels. 'Nuff said.
Then you have the high-fashion, low-concept stuff that's got a maybe/ish/Batman attitude to reality. There's a car under there somewhere - often utilising the same company's Le Mans V12 with 1,300bhp mounted under the driver's seat and both gullwing and scissor doors. They also have the manufacturer's badge plonked on the ends. Think Peugeot 907 RC.
This is Vivienne Westwood catwalk show material - it will never, ever make it to the streets, and if it ever did, it'd be out of fashion within the hour. Nice to look at, but as relevant as an Amish internet café.
Then you have close-concepts. These look, smell and feel like real cars. But they aren't. They get your jaw dropping just enough to make you think that the brand is actually quite funky, so that they can give a bit of positive spin to the beige shitboxes they currently produce.
Everyone does this. It's like a disease. People will argue that the side repeater design may make an appearance on the 2050 version of an as-yet-unannounced supercar, but then maybe it won't, because we'll all be too old to care, or actually dead.
Then there's the car they don't bother to give a silly name to, that might just spawn something that looks vaguely like it that you and I will be able to drive. Of course the real car will have smaller wheels, more ride height, a higher roof, less width, plastic wheelarches and about as much romance as a cutlery set.
But at least we can dream with some hope of it coming at least a little true...
