1. The Cadillac V16 Concept – If GM had dared take the brand way up market, where it belongs, things would have been different for the “standard of the world.” But the nettle was not grasped, and the brand continued—and continues—its long march downmarket, into extinction.
2. The Lincoln Continental concept – There was a time when someone at Ford thought that the Lincoln brand shouldn’t be a Ford trim level. Would that it was.
3. Chrysler ME 412 – If memory serves (and thank you for your service), the ME 412 was little more than a re-sculpted Pagani Zonda. But WTH. If you’re going down in flames, you might as well do so in one of these bad boys. Again, it’s a case of a brand deciding to go WAY upmarket. Or not.
4. Porche Tapiro – Giorgetto Giugiaro’s answer to the question: can we please move beyond the 911 now? Of course, the equally dippy 928 did just that, while not making a po-faced mockery of the family face (bonus!), as today’s non-911 Porsche’s do. The new Panamera, in particular, demonstrates the silliness of trying too hard to hold onto the past.
5. Maybach Exelero – There was no reason for Mercedes to reconstitute Maybach, given brand overlap, the dead marque’s association with the Nazis and a design that makes Wonder Bread seem like an artisan’s handiwork. And then a tire company—yes, a tire company—built the Exelero. Suddenly, Maybach made sense.
6. Holden Efijy – Struth! I know the Chevrolet SSR bombed. And I realize that this car probably has a go-kart’s chance in hell of passing U.S. safety regulations. But I’ve always thought that American carmakers needed to return to their brash, big car roots (which the Chrysler 300’s initial success proved IMHO). Imagine if this—or something similar—had been the new Pontiac. Ha!
7. Jeep Gladiator – No brainer.
8. Mercury Messenger – Is/was there a place for Mercury in Ford’s lineup? Nope. But if there is/was, I reckon it is/was in the luxury coupe sweet spot (leaving luxury four-doors to Lincoln). Unfortnately, the Glass House Gang shot the Messenger, if you know what I mean.
9. Buick LeSabre – Just kidding. Buick made some spectacular concept cars back in the day, and even built the Riviera. Nowadays, LaCrosse be damned, Drive Beautiful is a cruel joke.
10. BMW Mille Miglia – Just kidding, again, only not. BMW’s current design language is so hideously overwrought that the company should have built an entire run of these things and given one to every exec in the company. That way they could get the Chris Bangle Axles of White Power thing out of their collective system once and for all.
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Numbers 11 and 12, please? My nominations are…
11. The Chrysler Gas Turbine car.
http://www.allpar.com/mopar/turbine.html
12. The Studebaker Sceptre.
http://www.theavanti.com/studebaker_museum.htm
The Efijy and Miglia look like they should have been featured in Gattaca (and that’s not a complaint).
I’m not so sure about the rest but the Jeep Gladiator was, as you say, a no brainer. It still looks like the very embodiment of the Jeep brand.
I’d have both the Jeep and the Holden in my driveway. The Mercury would have sold well.
but the LeSabre… that defies words.
I’m into electric cars. The GM AUTOnomy/Hy-wire concept cars were technically brilliant. So, of course, abandoned. There is a sad story of promise unfulfilled.
You are spot on with the Lincoln Continental concept. It would have been the perfect step forward. Saw the BMW at their museum last month, and I thought it looked seriously bad-ass in a good way…
Good post, I’ve oftem wondered about some of these very cars.
The Lincoln definitely, they need some brand differentiation and this was a good way forward, the Caddy, beautiful car, but are there enough wealthy bankers out there, the Jeep, cool, the Maybach, a great car for an unnecesary brand.
The rest are not so strong. The merc is good, but where do you go from there? Love the Holden, but not something to build a brand on. The ME 412, a mid engine Viper, no thanks.
Businesses kill the great for the pedestrian because that’s what comsumers buy. When people criticize businesses for all making the same thing I’m reminded of a poster with a shot of a herd of Zebra, with an enscription below that reads “When people are free to do as they please, they usually end up mimicking each other”.
Most people would probably not agree with me, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Ford’s 021c Concept Car.
It was the right kind of uniqueness in a small package that “if” done right would sell well (so I think). At least it would be easier on the eyes than the current Focus.
And what ever happen to Dodge’s Razor concept? We got the Caliber instead?? uhhhh…
Absolutely on the Lincoln and Jeep. That Continental concept was marvelous, and would have single-handedly reinvigorated the brand. Instead, we got the MKS.
The Cadillac Sixteen was–and remains–a really bad idea. A cartoon with awful space efficiency–few people would have actually bought one.
Fisker’s about to find out how many people want a cramped, low-slung driving position in a large sedan.
The Efijy was brilliant in concept and detail. It irritated me that Aussies did such a tremendous riff on the best of ’40s American cars – mainly because they did it while Americans were standing around with their fingers up their, um, noses.
Back in the late 50’s early 60’s (as I understand it) a top of the range Caddy was priced similar to a Rolls Royce or a Mercedes 600. Does anyone have any insight into the decision making process at GM that led them to abandon making top of the range cars?
- Sixteen: I dunno — the Art & Science show cars always looked a lot better than the production models, and I can’t help thinking it would have ended up a sixteen-cylinder XLR, a mild technical curiosity that’s perfectly useless in the real world.
- Lincoln Continental — Blah. I’m not fond of the ‘61 Continental (tasteful but utterly anodyne), which sold better than its baroque predecessor, but still didn’t sell well. This cautious retro showcar advanced the art of nothing.
- ME412 — Honda couldn’t break through the badge-snobbery barrier with the genuinely splendid NSX, which actually did advance the state of the art. Not sure why a Chrysler-badged, cookie-cutter supercar would have been any better.
- Tapiro — I’ve never liked Porsche styling, particularly, but I have a hard time saying Porsche would have been better off with a Maserati Merak knockoff.
- Effijy — Another gruesome retro rod. After the Prowler and SSR, haven’t we had enough?
- Messenger — Here, I agree, although it makes me wish Mercury hadn’t spoiled the Cougar and Marauder names, because “Messenger” is a weird choice for an obviously Mustang-based, ‘67-Cougar-inspired sport coupe.
- Mille Miglia — Shudder. Don’t joke like that, man, I’m not confident that BMW has that much of a sense of irony.
Maybe if a few of these got produced, the US would have a few more cars worth bragging about to the Europeans.
http://www.cargurus.com/blog/2009/10/16/great-cars-in-america-that-europeans-dont-get
You’ve probably confused a few people by not mentioning that the Buick LeSabre (1951) is at least twenty, if not forty years older than any of the other concept cars listed.
It WAS flash, neat, and wonderful . . . in it’s day.
Calling GM the standard of the world is like calling Italy the Roman Empire. That is hanging on to the past. The public has changed, there is no standard of the world, and it was probably hyperbole back in its day. The Sixteen is hype.
Only car on the list I really want and think its a great a idea to make is the Maybach. That is awesome. That is just me thought. I wont blame anyone for liking anything else. I just hope people change their attitude to something healthier then I’m better then you are.
Well turbobeetle, I for one agree with you 100%. The 021c wouldn’t have aged one bit by today.
With their modern V6 the Messenger (with a better name)could have gone straight at the G35/37 coupes and the 3 series (had IRS didn’t it?). Well, with some serious interior work.
Cad16-Heck, they were going bankrupt anyway. Why not do it with some panache. An embaressing death or a glorious one? Is there really a choice?
Efijy would have been a one hit wonder…10 years ago. Retro is a road to nowhere.
BTW, I personally think all the 300s early run showed is that the fashion sensitive have a short attention span. The real american sedan has been patiently designed and refined by Toyonda and cheerfully bought by millions off the public. Yah, I don’t want one either, but that is where the war must be fought.
Gladiator? Not a truck guy but sure, why not? It probably would have only cost about another couple hours of engineering time to get ready.
Continental? Maybe. Too retro for a real run IMO, hard to build the next generation. They really should have kept after the LS and built from there. It was a pretty decent start.
Just some thoughts.
Bunter
@ jmo: No, they weren’t in that range. Cadillac’s only real postwar stab at the ultra-luxury market was the Eldorado Brougham, which cost over $13,000 (around $100,000 in modern dollars). It was not a success, and Cadillac lost a lot of money on it; that result made them very, very reluctant to try it again. Outside of the Brougham line, a fully equipped early-sixties Cadillac Sixty Special or Eldorado would cost you maybe $8,000 ($55-$60K in modern dollars). A W112 Mercedes (300SE/SEL) would start at a little under $9,000, and a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud would run you at least $17,000.
Why didn’t Cadillac try to compete with those cars directly? They had no reason to. Again, the Brougham had been a money-loser, but the rest of the Cadillac line was selling very well (around 160,000 units in 1960, over 200,000 by the end of the decade). Imported luxury cars were very rare, particularly outside of New York and Los Angeles, and Cadillac was the American status symbol. Cadillac resale values were high, and a lot of affluent people would trade in every year because the out-of-pocket cost was relatively low. Cadillac could have sold more cars than they did, but they chose not to extend production capacity too much, because they wanted to keep demand high. Under those conditions, why would you want to divert production capacity to limited-production ultra-luxury cars that would sell in (for GM) negligible numbers and probably lose money?
Oh man, the ME412. How ridiculous of a car, but yet so awesome.
The car was not entirely original work. Chrysler guys stole a lot of stuff out of the greater DCX parts bin to make it, but the fact that Chrysler made it, and it was equal to if not better than what Daimler was capable of, made certain divisions (SLR mainly) mad. It was actually in the prototype stage, but canned due to what amounted to corporate jealousy.
O21c? Wasn’t that that little orange and white Trabantish thing with hidden headlights?
If so, eeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwh!
Bunter
Liked the Caddy Cien far better than the ME412.
Just didn’t do it for me. Artless, IMO.
Guess it couldn’t have hurt per my thoughts on the Cad16.
Bunter
Going out in style is the way to do it in this business. If Auburn, Cord, and Duesenberg had the guts to do it, so should GM!
Instead we get a whimper from Detroit.
–chuck
argentla,
Do we know why it wasn’t a success – how did a market 80k+ sedans like the S-class, 7-series and A8 evolve in Europe but not in US?
One would have thought that going with a higher margin luxury vehicle would have been one way of dealing with high UAW labor costs.
I would drop the Maybach Excelero from the list
since it’s ugly, and Mercedes has plenty of quick sports coupes that cost plenty of money already…(didn’t I read about one here?)
In any case I don’t understand how the Ford 49
didn’t make the list of cars that should have been produced… although perhaps labeled as a Mercury or Lincoln.
http://www.hyts.hu/autok/ford/=49-concept/ford_=49-concept_e6.jpg
The Cadillac Sixteen would have been the perfect car built by the perfect company for today’s captains of industry. All of the executives of the bailout banks should be driving these things. Goldman Sachs, AIG, Bank of America, Citi… the list goes on and on. The government could have issued a directive to the executives of these companies to buy it with their bonuses.
The Jeep & the Mercury are the only one’s I’d buy. The other ones are overwrought and ridiculous. The Caddy look like a big dick. There are a lot more production-worthy concept cars than this lot. Off the top of my head…
GM Ultralite (they were so far ahead of the curve on this one!)
Ford 021c & Bronco (although I normally don’t like retro- these are more classic than retro, and had room to grow and evolve)
Dodge Copperhead
BMW efficient dynamics
Lamborghini Portifino
Good post. Now can we have a post of the ten cars you wish they still made?? Cars like the NSX and Viper or even the Mitsu Eclipse Turbo AWD. Something that had longevity of at least a couple of years.
Whatever happened to the Dodge Hornet? It was sporty xB clone that actually looked good. And there was the Dodge Demon which was a Miata/Sky knock-off.
Dodge and Jeep seem to crank out the most realistic concepts that when (if?!?) produced match up pretty well. For example the Viper and current Challenger. However almost everyone else (especially GM) shows vehicles that are so over the top they’ll never see the light of day. And when they do make one it hardly matches the look of the concept (like the Volt).
Love the Cadillac Sixteen…could have been the next Duesenberg….and the Holden Efijy is so cool, but probably impractical to manufacture.
The Lincoln’s simplicity is lovely…definitely pays homage to the classic ‘61.
Agree on the Jeep.
The Caddy I love but it looks like something from a Batman movie which was probably too radical a leap for the suits at GM.
And isn’t the Mercury basically the ‘Stang these days? Sure looks an awful lot like em. Which means, I guess, that that one would have worked. Maybe not as a Mercury badge but Ford showed it could work as a Ford.
You left out the Ford 427!
I don’t know about the others, but the Caddy V16 and that Lincoln concept are totally gorgeous. The V16 may be space inefficient, as per Michael Karesh, but the Lincoln concept might well have done much to revive that brand. In fact, the Lincoln is absolutely stunning. Had they done that, Obama would be riding around in one of those instead of a Cadillac.
I also liked the Ford 427.
The mercury messenger and the porsche tapiro really are ugly.
Chrysler made some good concept cars a few years ago, some of which would actually have had a market window of opportunity no one else had.
Dodge M80:
http://beautifulwallpapers.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/dodge-m80-concept-2002-13.jpg
Would have crushed the Ford Ranger as the only competitor in light truck sales.
Dodge Hornet:
http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-2006/2006-Dodge-Hornet-Left-Rear-Side-1024×768.jpg
A cool small car with a gotta have it factor. What a novel concept?
Jeep Rescue:
http://www.wjjeeps.com/concept/jeep_rescue_04.jpg
The Hummer crusher.
So, Mr Marchionne, where are my cars now?
@jmo
Because the most powerful marketing word in American English over the past half century has been “imported”.
@ jmo: Mercedes and Rolls had been selling luxury barges to heads of state and so forth since well before World War 2, and once postwar production resumed, they more or less picked up where they left off. Cadillac, by comparison, was the arriviste; it didn’t really even surpass Packard as the #1 American luxury brand until the forties.
A lot of Cadillac’s great success from the fifties through the seventies was that they found a real sweet spot of price and image. For the price of a loaded Eldorado, you could still buy a house in much of the country, but working-class people could (and did) put themselves in hock to swing it. The Eldorado Brougham, by comparison, was so much more expensive (more than double the base price of a Series 62 sedan) that you really did have to be rich to afford it. Cadillac found that a lot of the people who were genuinely that rich (rather than just wanting to seem rich) would rather have something more exotic, something that the masses could never afford to touch, and may never even have heard of.
On a more prosaic level, I actually think resale values had something to do with it. One of Cadillac’s great strengths was that its mainstream cars had excellent resale value. Their dollar depreciation was a little high, but as a percentage of selling price, it was among the lowest in the business. If you were a businessman, or could otherwise write off your car as a business expense, that made a Cadillac a fairly practical proposition — say, $60 a month plus gas and insurance. The depreciation on more expensive cars like the Brougham was much steeper, and harder to justify from an accounting point of view.
See also this: http://ateupwithmotor.com/model-histories/luxury-and-personal-luxury-cars/185-1967-cadillac-eldorado.html
@ Patrickj: I would argue that that’s really only been true since the late sixties or early seventies. Before the Baby Boom generation reached voting age, imports were generally considered either rich man’s toys or cars for kooks. In 1959, a Mercedes would only have had greater snob value than a Cadillac in certain rarefied circumstances, and the number of Americans who aspired to a Benz was pretty small.
1. Cadillac V16 – Okay
2. Lincoln Continental – Yuck, no!
3. Chrysler ME 412 – Oh yeah, this car has the stature to actually pull off the fluted hood
4. Porsche Tapiro – No, no, NO, no, no, yes (a vote for leopard spots)
5. Maybach Exelero – Ja to Dr. Strangelove model (Heil Hitler!)
6. Holden Efijy – Hello, sweet bombshell from Down Under! Where have you been all of my life?
7. Jeep Gladiator – No brainer. And what does that tell us about the brain trust at the head of ChryMoCo?
8. Mercury Messenger – If there has to be a Mercury, this is it.
9. Buick LeSabre – I’m glad you were joking
10. BMW Mile Miglia – Ran out of good options, eh? Since you’re goofing around, why not the Cadillac Provoq?
I like the sixteen so much I have from some time ago as wallpaper
I remember when the V16 debuted in Detroit – I really had my fingers crossed on that one. Cadillac was moving in the right direction in those days. This was before they completely hosed up the S series redesign.
For me at least, the definite vehicle that I wish they built was the VW Microbus concept van from a few years ago.
Who in heck thought it would be a good idea to rebadge Chrysler minivans? I would have bought that microbus…
One of my favorites was the Chrysler Atlantic (based on the most beautiful car of all time the late 1930s Talbot Lago) Link to a Picture.
That No 4 Porsche looks like it was put into production as the DeLorean.
Saw the Exelero at the Auto und Technik Museum in Sinsheim, Germany last month. That thing is fantastically gorgeous.
I think the Lincoln Machete was a far better looking concept car, and that was from 1988. Particularly the interior- the console wraped around the driver and it was beautifully smooth and simple…styling reminescent of the bridge in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The Lincoln Continental… why does it sound so much better than The Lincoln MKS? Also, why does it look so much better?
The ME412 reminds me of a Messerschmitt (sp?) fighter… about to be shot down by a Spitfire.
The Holden Efijy… pardon me while I mop up my vomit. Same goes with the old Buick and BMW concepts.
If I was a Mercury product planner in desperate need of new product (oh, wait) I would go to Alan M. and offer my firstborn to take the Mustang and lose the rear seats. Instead of Messenger I would call it Cougar.
I saw the Caddy 16 and the Continental at the Chicago auto show the year they debuted. (maybe they were a year apart?) I knew from first glance that the 16 was a cartoon. It was purely a concept for the sake of conceptualism. However, I had high hopes for the Lincoln. It was a lovely looking car, a tasteful homage to the its ealy sixties predecessor. Most of all, at the time Lincoln had nothing else going for it. Cadillac had already introduced its new design language while the production Lincolns looked extremely dated. I still think its worth their while to bring back the Continental, simply to justify the existence of the Lincoln brand.
Fascinating dreams, but what are the chances that any of these concepts would have made it to production without being watered down by the bean counters and rendered unrecognizable by the constraints of mass production? Concept cars are so amazing because they can exist in a fantasy world that lacks the cruel realities of the mundane place in which we live and drive.
Nice Jeep. Bad name.
Don’t dis the LeSabre. In its day (1951) Harley Earl’s brainchild foreshadowed the styling trends of GM cars through the 50’s.
@Bunter1: If you want to see the evolution of the 1961 Lincoln styling, look at the 1965-68 Chryslers. Elwood Engel jumped from Lincoln to Chrysler in 1961. The 1965 Chrysler was his first “clean sheet” design for Chrysler.
I actually prefer the 1996 Lincoln Sentinel concept car to this one. It incorporates some of the styling found in today’s Cadillacs, but predated Caddy’s “Art and Science” design language.
The only good reason I can think of why Jeep doesn’t produce the Gladiator is that there would be too much overlap with Dodge pickup trucks. This truck would sell.
@ Mike66Chryslers — In particular, the 1964 Imperial (one of Engel’s first) was a straight-up ripoff of the ‘61 Continental. I think even calling it an evolution is a little generous; it was basically the same concept with somewhat different detailing.
The Continental actually originated as a Thunderbird concept, an in-house rival to the “Bullet Bird” ‘61 T-Bird. All the execs who saw it liked it and thought it was too nice to be a Thunderbird. At the behest of Robert McNamara, it was stretched into a four-door and became the ‘61 Continental.
I saw the Holden Efijy concept in the sheetmetal at an autoshow a couple of years ago and I can say that in person it’s a visual letdown. And the Efijy was the one car that I had really wanted to see going into the show.
It looks great in photos but in person you look at it and say something like: “Ah well it is obviously different but …um, uh …nevermind.”
I agree 100% about the Maybach Exelero. It would have given the brand meaning.
I disagree about the Lincoln Continental though. Just look at it, it’s just a me-too version of the Chrysler 300C. That’s not enough to give new meaning to the Lincoln brand.
But I’ve always thought that American carmakers needed to return to their brash, big car roots (which the Chrysler 300’s initial success proved IMHO). Imagine if this—or something similar—had been the new Pontiac. Ha!
I’m sorry, RF, but I have to disagree with you here. Times have changed, cars have changed, but Detroit is still struggling to do so. The last thing GM or Ford (I’ve already given up on Fiatsyler) needs right now is a explosion of nostalgia. Resurrected Mustangs and Camaros are a nice idea, but hardly bread-and-butter material. Need I bring up the Thunderbird? Also, it’s arguable that the “big and brash” era was relived via the SUV craze of the past decade, and look where that got Detroit. No, it’s high time to evolve or die for the American auto industry.