Concept Cars

Description

Concept vehicles are cars we can't drive - and only in rare cases are we allowed to touch them. Just to have a look at them we have to stand in line at the motor shows. Even so, concept vehicle creators reach millions of people through the major international motor shows in Tokyo, Frankfurt, Geneva, Paris or Birmingham or the ones that take place in the big conference centers in New York, Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles. It's sufficient for us to admire these prototypes from far away or to have the chance to brush up against them and to dream about the day we will get into one or two of them. Concept vehicles are dream cars, vehicles that we passionately hope one day will be part of our cars-to-come dream. These are the cars of the future, or at least, of a future that some creative mind imagines. In their bold new shapes, concept vehicles show us the future through the designer's artistic eye and creative imagination. Some of these models announce the arrival of cars under production, others are design and technology experiments.

Larry Edsell is a freelance automotive journalist who was an editor for 12 years at AutoWeek magazine, America's only weekly auotomotive journal. A former newspaper sports editor, he has covered motorsports events from Australia to Le Mans and has driven more than a half a million miles in four continents while testing cars, trucks and SUVs. He is author of Masters of Car Design (White Star Publishers, 2008).