The Goal
You come into work on Monday morning and, right away, your boss wants to see you. As soon as you walk into his office, he starts right in. The company has a new concept car project. The car needs to be ready for the big auto show, in Detroit, in January. Your first question is going to be, "What are we trying to accomplish with this car?" There are lots of reasons for creating a concept car. Here are just a few of them.

Photo courtesy Toyota With a completely open cockpit, the MTRC is a great example of a concept car that is almost totally impractical but generates a lot of buzz at an auto show.

Concept cars let designers test out new ideas. Everyone knows that cars can turn. But, what if you made a car that could spin? Is it possible? If it were possible, would it actually work well? When you drive it on a city street, does it make it easier to park? If you are driving off-road in a forest, does it make it easier to get out of tight spots? Or is it a total pain? A concept car lets you try the idea out to see what happens.

The Jeep Hurricane is a perfect example of a "new idea" concept car. The new idea designed into the Hurricane is spinning. All four wheels can splay out, and the car can spin on its center axis like a top.

Photo courtesy Daimler-Chrysler Jeep Hurricane

Concept cars get people excited. If you create a sports car that is faster than any car that the world has ever seen, that is going to get people excited. If you show off a new technology that has never been tried before, that will get people excited. People like to see "firsts," and they like to see things getting bigger, faster and stronger. Even if the car is so extreme that it will never make it to production, an outrageous concept car does its job. It gets people talking.

The Dodge Tomahawk is a great example of this type of concept car. But, it's not really a car - it's a motorcycle! The designers took the huge, 10-cylinder, 500 horsepower engine out of a Dodge Viper. Then they wrapped a motorcycle around it. In the process, they created a completely new way to put four wheels on a motorcycle. Two wheels just weren't enough to handle all the power in this engine. Supposedly, this motorcycle has so much power that it should be able to go 400 miles per hour! When people see the Tomahawk for the first time, it's so outrageous that it definitely gets their attention. And, it is so fast that it captures their imaginations. It's a great concept car -- concept vehicle, that is.

Photo courtesy Daimler-Chrysler Dodge Tomahawk

Concept cars help car companies find out what people like. Let's say that you have a new car idea, but you don't know if people will buy it. The easiest way to find out is to create a concept car. You put the car on the concept car circuit. If lots of people love the concept car, then you take it into production and you start selling the real car. If people don't like it, then either you scrap the idea or you try to make it better.

Lots of cars follow this path. The Porsche Boxster started out as a concept car. So did the Dodge Prowler. So did the latest Ford Thunderbird, and the Chrysler Crossfire. These cars got great press and rave reviews as concept cars, so they became real cars.

Photo courtesy Daimler-Chrysler The prowler first appeared at the Detroit auto show in 1993. It went into production in 1997. Then, after five years, production ended. It's one of a very few open-wheel cars to actually be mass-produced and sold by a major car company.