QOTD: Are Wacky Trade Show Prototypes Important or Just Plain Stupid?

Matt Posky
by Matt Posky

Automotive trade shows serve as a wonderful opportunity for manufacturers and suppliers to showcase upcoming products to the people most interested in them. However, carmakers understand that you have to take time to feed the global hype machine, which usually means tossing a few concept vehicles into the mix. While some of these designs serve as tantalizing preludes to real-deal automobiles, others are fantastical fabrications — representing little more than an interesting idea that will never reach production.

This year’s Tokyo Motor Show saw plenty of vehicles straddling the line between faintly tangible and utterly incorporeal in terms of future production. Sure, we know not every prototype will accurately represent subsequent real-world models. Subaru’s Viziv may not be a dead ringer for the next WRX, but it at least gives us a sense of where the design team is heading. The same is true for Honda’s Sports EV or Mazda’s incredible-looking Vision Coupe and Kai concepts.

However, for every concept car earnestly trying to convey a new design language or highlight upcoming features there is also something so implausible that it leaves you wondering why the manufacturer wheeled it out in the first place. Which brings us to today’s question: are these over-the-top automotive prototypes meaningful or a complete waste of resources?

If you can’t make up your mind, or are grappling with the concept of what qualifies as “over-the-top,” allow me to clarify.

In 1957, Studebaker-Packard unveiled a nuclear-powered concept vehicle called the Astral. It drove around balanced on a single massive wheel and featured the ability to hover over water. It also utilized energy fields that protected occupants from wind, radiation, and collisions. The Astral was so unapologetically futuristic that it served as a blueprint for the cartoon car the Jetsons owned.

It was followed by other dead-end atomic vehicles like the Ford Nucleon and Seattle-ite XXI, the latter of which was so ridiculous that Ford didn’t even bother to build a full-sized version. These are the primer examples that spring to mind when it comes to over-the-top concepts — designs so impossibly advanced, extravagant, impractical, implausible, or unmarketable, that you know they’ll never be built the second you see them. Do they have any merit?

Allow me to make this more difficult for you. Consider the Mercedes-Benz Bionic — a minivan based upon the physical attributes of a tropical sea creature from 2005, built exclusively to garner publicity. However, the Bionic actually worked. It had a drag coefficient of 0.19 and proved to be incredibly fuel efficient.

Today’s big trade show promises don’t revolve around atomic power or phenomenal fish-based drag coefficients though. Our atomic renaissance is “mobility.” In addition to being a magic word for investors, its a word that encompasses all aspects of electrification, self-driving technologies, and automobiles connected to the internet.

With that I give you the Toyota i-Ride — an implausibly small vehicle featured at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show with the sole purpose of serving as a mobility companion to those needing help moving around. It’s a terrific idea but Toyota decided to make it talk, predict emotions, and possess a level of autonomy well in excess of what is realistically possible. The execution lets you know immediately that this is not a real car, nor will it ever be.

Perhaps vehicles like these aren’t supposed to be anything more than aspirational. Toyota came up with a concept, built a mockup, and made a video. But there’s no sense of seriousness and no pathway for the i-Ride to take in the long-term.

Maybe it’s okay for cars like these to just be ideas — allowing automaker to experiment and imagine, while sharing a concept. Is that what’s happening here, or do these wacky prototypes not serve any practical purpose beyond allowing an automaker to drum up some attention for itself?

[Image: Toyota]

Matt Posky
Matt Posky

A staunch consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulation. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied with the corporate world and resentful of having to wear suits everyday, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, that man has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed on the auto industry by national radio broadcasts, driven more rental cars than anyone ever should, participated in amateur rallying events, and received the requisite minimum training as sanctioned by the SCCA. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and managed to get a pizza delivery job before he was legally eligible. He later found himself driving box trucks through Manhattan, guaranteeing future sympathy for actual truckers. He continues to conduct research pertaining to the automotive sector as an independent contractor and has since moved back to his native Michigan, closer to where the cars are born. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer — stating that front and all-wheel drive vehicles cater best to his driving style.

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  • JMII JMII on Oct 26, 2017

    My only problem is they claim these are "design studies" which will be used gauge feedback. With modern social media the feedback is immediate and obvious, yet they ignore it. So when the car finally arrives everyone screams that they softened or changed things from the prototype too much. We got way too much pie-in-the-sky hype building going on here. If you going to show something amazing don't sell out later and back down on your vision. The huge wheels and tiny mirrors along with the minimal interior aside you should be able to see the main body and key design elements carry over to production. Especially the proportions, so don't show me huge fender aches if you can't pull them off. Don't show me impossibly tiny headlights if they don't really work. Honesty I like Apple's approach here. And Ford copied it perfectly for the GT. Don't show or talk about anything... then - BOOM showcase it with a real version of the "future" I can buy today. When the GT launched it stole the show because it wasn't a concept car, it was a functional vehicle you could have driven off the turntable that day. Granted you had to order it, but nothing on the car was fake. The opposite approach can be seen with how GM birthed the new Camaro. Months of protypes, the Transformer movie, constant design showcases under the bright lights. Then almost boredom when the car finally arrived because we had seen it so much already.

  • Fred Fred on Oct 26, 2017

    We had a new boss come in and told us to come up with new ideas, no matter how crazy "we need to inovate" So I came up with this idea that we could glue a part together. I even talked with our adhesive guy about and he thought it was possible. When I presented the idea, I was shot down out of hand. Didn't bother much with him after that, and in a few years he was gone. My point being allow your engineers and designers to come up with ideas no matter how wacky. There just might be something you can use.

  • ToolGuy Once again my home did not catch on fire and my fire extinguisher(s) stayed in the closet, unused. I guess I threw my money away on fire extinguishers.(And by fire extinguishers I mean nuclear missiles.)
  • Carson D The UAW has succeeded in organizing a US VW plant before. There's a reason they don't teach history in the schools any longer. People wouldn't make the same mistakes.
  • B-BodyBuick84 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport of course, a 7 seater, 2.4 turbo-diesel I4 BOF SUV with Super-Select 4WD, centre and rear locking diffs standard of course.
  • Corey Lewis Think how dated this 80s design was by 1995!
  • Tassos Jong-iL Communist America Rises!
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