Items13The creator’s order
  1. 1Buick Y-JobBuick Y-Job1938 Buick Y-Job Often called the first concept car, Harley Earl's Y-Job was built to test ideas rather than to be sold. Its headlamps hid behind covers that opened like eyelids, the windows were electrically operated and the convertible top disappeared under a metal cover. Wraparound bumpers and…0
  2. 2Chrysler Thunderbolt (1941 concept car)Chrysler Thunderbolt (1941 concept car)The retractable hardtop starts here. The Thunderbolt's one-piece metal roof retracted electrically into a space behind the seat at the flick of a switch, giving a closed coupe and an open roadster in one body, and its headlamps hid away when not in use. Folding metal roofs took decades to become a…0
  3. 3Pininfarina BMC 1800 Berlina Aerodinamica (1967 concept car)Pininfarina BMC 1800 Berlina Aerodinamica (1967 concept car)This is the concept that drew the 1970s family car. Pininfarina built it on its own initiative on the humble Austin and Morris 1800, wrapping that roomy platform in a low-nosed, wedge-tailed fastback shaped for air flow rather than fashion. BMC passed on it, and other companies took the hint. The…0
  4. 4Mercedes-Benz ESF 22 (1973 experimental safety vehicle)Mercedes-Benz ESF 22 (1973 experimental safety vehicle)The airbag in your steering wheel has a clear ancestor in this bulky S-Class. Mercedes built a series of Experimental Safety Vehicles in the early 1970s, and the ESF 22, shown at the international safety vehicle conference in Kyoto in 1973, carried a driver airbag alongside three-point belts with…0
  5. 5BMW TurboBMW Turbo1972 BMW Turbo Gullwing doors grab the eye, but look past them. The Turbo's center console was angled toward the driver so a belted driver could reach the controls, and BMW put that driver-oriented layout into production in the first 3 Series of 1975. Most BMW dashboards still lean toward the…0
  6. 6Ford Probe III (1981 concept car)Ford Probe III (1981 concept car)Ford used this Frankfurt show car to get buyers used to a shape it was about to sell them. The Probe III appeared in September 1981, a year before the Sierra, with the same smooth, grille-light nose and rounded body that replaced the boxy Cortina, and its drag figure undercut that of the new 1984…0
  7. 7Mercedes-Benz F100Mercedes-Benz F1001991 Mercedes-Benz F 100 Shown at the Detroit auto show in 1991, this minivan-shaped research car reads like the options list of a modern luxury sedan. It replaced the key with a chip card, and Mercedes' Keyless Go followed on the S-Class at the end of the decade. Its radar distance control ran…0
  8. 8Mercedes-Benz F200Mercedes-Benz F2001996 Mercedes-Benz F 200 Imagination The headline idea flopped, and the rest arrived almost at once. The F 200 had no steering wheel or pedals, only drive-by-wire sidesticks, and that never went on sale. What did go on sale is a useful checklist: the window airbag it introduced reached the E-Class…0
  9. 9Volvo SCCVolvo SCC2001 Volvo Safety Concept Car Volvo built the SCC around a simple question: what can the driver actually see? Cameras in the door mirrors watched the blind spot, and Volvo began fitting its camera-based Blind Spot Information System to production models at the end of 2004. Blind-spot warning is…0
  10. 10General Motors Hy-wireGeneral Motors Hy-wire2002 General Motors Hy-wire Strip the body off almost any modern electric car and you find the Hy-wire's big idea: a flat skateboard holding the energy store and the motor, with the cabin sitting on top. GM's 2002 concept ran on hydrogen fuel cells and steered by wire, and because nothing…0