50+ years of Japanese concept cars (2010)
pinktentacle.com
pinktentacle.com
Geez car companies, show some guts. Build some of those and put them on the road. No new car today gets anyone I know excited, but some of those old photos do.
I had a Subaru SVX that looked like this one: https://bringatrailer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2003_su...
That car was designed by ItalDesign in Italy, a firm famous for many iconic sports and concept car designs. In the OP you see quite a few examples of their work. The inset windows are something of a signature of theirs, as it allows the upper roof area to be more sloped.
Anyhow, it was a pretty striking car to drive around. Unfortunately the US version was only ever sold with a mushy and failure prone transmission. So despite having a rather nice 230 HP flat six engine, a wide stance, and a suspension that would be quite sporting when stiffened up, it never really ate into the low end BMW or Porsche market it was targeted at.
There has to be some middle ground for safety inside and on the outside.
[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... [2] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...
A lot of times false precision bugs me but here I think you are comparing fine differences and need a bit more.
Using your figures, (36/33)/(329/309), I get 2.5%, not 4%.
It definitely looks like a concept car. but you can buy it right now and at ~100k$ it's not priced like an exotic (although I wouldn't really go as far as to call it affordable).
https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1028135_mazda-ryuga-conc...
One of the choices they made to speed it to production was to uses ceramic body panel molds; quicker and easier to create than steel molds, but they wear out quicker. The life of the production and replacement parts was limited by the life of these molds.
The VehiCROSS, IMHO, was a pretty cool looking production car. And the concept they had for the topless version, VX-O2, was also super cool looking (aside: unlike the Nissan Murano which I loved the look of but the topless version I thought was one of the ugliest cars ever).
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/features/nissan-figaro-30...
I mean, there are exceptions like the Nissan AP-X or the Infinity Essence, but the rest doesn't look like something I'd even want to drive. Maybe that's more to do with the change from hand-drawing/photos to 3d rendering, I don't know. But 1990 is roughly where I changed from mainly "that'd be fun/interesting to drive" to mainly "I'd never want to drive that".
Nobody says that today, do they?
But these concept cares are really interesting! I see a lot of cars where at first glance I clock the car as a BMW M1, or a De Tomaso Pantera. Stick a huge wing on the Daihatsu TA-X80, and you could pass it off as a cheap Zonda.
Epic