Concept cars provide manufacturers with a test bed for all sorts of new innovations, from new design languages to cutting-edge technology. It means they're often some of the most exciting vehicles about, with features several years ahead of any production car. They're certainly the best way for carmakers to show off a new idea and gauge the market's reaction.
However, not all new ideas are good ideas. As these concepts go to show, sometimes a brand will come up with something so baffling that it's a mystery as to how the concept ever made it as far as the auto show circuit. Whether it's solutions to problems that don't exist, combinations of car styles that don't make any sense, or just plain disgusting-looking cars, there's always something new put out by manufacturers that makes everyone think, "who thought this was a good idea?" Let's take a look at ten of the worst offenders that ever made it off the drawing board and onto the car show circuit.
10 Mercedes-Benz Vision Tokyo
Mercedes as a brand are generally pretty on-point with their concept cars, and they've produced some seriously incredible ideas over the years. The Vision Tokyo is a rare miss for them, and what a miss it is.
It's difficult to see exactly who this bread loaf-shaped lump of metal is supposed to appeal to, especially with that grossly oversized grille that's more basking shark than bourgeoisie. It seems like someone at Merc tried to make a minivan cool but decided the best way to do it was to make it look angry and ugly. Why, Mercedes, why.
9 Chevrolet EN-V
This 2011 concept would be hilarious if it wasn't actually a serious idea from one of the world's biggest brands. Many automakers have created pod-style concepts as a vision of future mobility, but few did so quite as literally as Chevrolet with the EN-V.
Visually it's sort of like a helmet on wheels, but underneath this is a very boring city-crawling short-range EV. The concept was created as a proposal to capture a share of the emerging Chinese EV market, but needless to say the EN-V never made it to production.
8 Toyota Rhombus
Exploring new design styles is a good thing for manufacturers as it enables innovation and stops a carmaker's range from getting stale. However, sometimes that exploration can veer into just making cars ugly for the sake of it.
The Toyota Rhombus is a prime example of that, as its uncomfortably angular design doesn't serve any purpose or add anything to the car. Sure, it makes what would have otherwise been a very run-of-the-mill EV concept stand out, but not in the right way. In fact, seeing this thing as Toyota's advertisement for their EVs would probably put more people off buying one than encourage them.
7 Suzuki Q-Concept
Adding another name to the list of pointless "future mobility" concepts, Suzuki seem to think that the future most drivers want is to zip around in a fishbowl on wheels with zero privacy. Oh, and only six miles of range.
According to them, the Q-Concept is a cross between a car and a bike, but in reality it's closer to being a jumped-up golf cart than anything else. The Renault Twizy has already covered the weird-looking-tiny-car niche, and that's hardly a sales smash despite being better in every way than the Q Concept.
6 Ferrari Conciso Concept By Michalak
Now, designer Bernd Michalak isn't the first person to take a Ferrari design and put their own twist on it. There have been some pretty great spin-off examples, like James Glickenhaus' Ferrari P4/5. But, this one is certainly one of the worst attempts made in recent history.
It just doesn't look like a Ferrari, in fact it doesn't look distinctly like anything at all. Originally the car was planned to be part of a limited production run, but there wasn't any interest in Michalak's design so only one was ever made. That's a good thing, as the less people that have to come across this pointlessly ugly car, the better.
5 VW Concept A
As the saying goes, sometimes less is more. Well, the VW Concept A clearly didn't get that memo, as it's a crossover coupe SUV with a soft top that's apparently also off-road capable and sporty. The design was later reworked and became the rather boring but practical Tiguan crossover.
The Concept A just feels a bit confused as a car, and because of that it's neither very cool nor very practical. The suicide rear doors make the back of the car look very cramped, and with alloys that big it hardly screams 'off-road'. It seems more like a cynical marketing ploy to cram as many buzzwords as possible into one concept, but the end result is just an underwhelming mashup of styles that don't quite gel.
4 Bertone Lamborghini Genesis
This concept is both a hideous Frankenstein car and stroke of genius, if that's even possible. Built by Bertone using Lamborghini parts, this is a gullwing-door minivan with a 5.7L V12 engine out of a Lamborghini Countach QV under the hood.
Only ever intended as a design study, the concept now lives at a museum in Italy. Why anyone ever thought to create this is a mystery, as is who the car was ever intended for. Rich mothers who like to get to soccer practice fast? Millionaire collectors with a strange penchant for minivans? Who knows. Still, it's great that this thing exists in the first place even though it's utterly pointless as a concept.
3 Rinspeed Presto
The Rinspeed Presto was created to solve a problem that never existed except perhaps in the mind of its madcap designer. Rinspeed are famous for their wacky concept designs, and this is no exception. The Presto can contract around 70cm, with the whole rear end of the car sliding forwards into the rear passenger compartment.
The idea was supposedly to make a four-seater car with the length of a two-seater, so it could park in tighter spaces. But Japan's kei car class already has compact four-seater design nailed, so Rinspeed's idea was not only pretty terrible looking, it was unneeded too.
2 Chrysler Imperial
Someone at Chrysler was clearly having delusions of grandeur when they approved this concept car to be built. It's based on a Rolls-Royce Phantom, albeit with a lot more of a generic design. Chrysler were at one point serious about putting the car into production, but thankfully they didn't.
After all, did they really think they were going to compete with the established players in the luxury car market, especially with a car that looks like that? The Imperial did have some decent luxury features but nothing anywhere near good enough to compete globally. Anyway, with Chrysler's dismal brand appeal it seems like a pointless segment for them to have even tried to get into.
1 Sbarro Autobau
In a world where every supercar maker is trying to build something more attention-grabbing than the next, there's inevitably going to be a time when things go too far. That time came at the 2010 Geneva Auto Show, when Sbarro debuted this, the Autobau.
There's only one word for it: hideous. It's a grotesque caricature of performance car design, every angle and line more stretched than it needs to be. It's not even coherent, with bulbous grilles, vents and accents everywhere. Jalopnik even called the Autobau the ugliest car ever, and it's hard not to agree. It begs the question of, not only why this concept was produced but also why anyone ever sketched it out in the first place.