Giant Ginkgo

My sister and I checked out the 2004 Chicago Auto Show, and this year there was a bumper crop of ugly concept cars. Over the past several years it has become apparent that almost all of the car designers in the world belong to the same small club. They apparently all get together so they can trade notes on what the "future" should look like. This is quite apparent in the large number of interchangeable concept sports cars that are being produced each year. Currently it is important that all of the vehicles should have big asses, wheels pushed as far to the ends as possible, and a general smushed/melted look is applied to them all. I can't help but wonder if the current trend of overally tall vehicles is the effect of SUV design rubbing off on everything.

So let's take a look at what the intrepid designers think they have in store for us...

First off, Volkswagon wows us with this SUV/beach buggy hybrid. (Souped up beach buggies have been popular for a number of years now.) With an exciting neon orange paint job, melted edges, and vertically opening doors this vehicle definitely looks like it came straight out of a show like Ghost in the Shell.

This Mitsubisi while pretty ugly and a good example of the general design trend, is apparently the winner of the 2004 Dakar Rally - which is pretty impressive considering what a harsh race that can be.

Volvo managed to include perhaps the most innovative design element of the show. If you look at the close-up of the rear light assembly, they used little fluid filled plastic thingies (or plastic ice cubes) to add texture to the design. I'm pretty much at a loss as to what it means... Maybe the light assemblies will have built in ice machines. Volvo and Volkswagon's designers apparently agree that the next generation should be orange, with vertically opening doors.

Mazda meanwhile purchased a used dark blue imac, and decided to genetically merge it with their Miata. This concept appeared to use slightly translucent plastics to give the car a slightly glowing feel. The model was clearly built for the Japanese market, since the driver side was opposite of the usual location.

Jeep has been providing some solid winners in the concept car competition. They had an amazing vehicle a year or two ago, with a bare aluminum chassis matched with frosted glass green accents. This year Jeep provided the answer to what would happen if you merged a Hummer with a classic Jeep. It was big, yellow, and nasty. But this side view mirror was truly magnificant. The cheapness of the design mixed with the idea of having to adjust your mirror everytime you used it as a spotlight... Simply brilliant! This wouldn't look out of place on one of the cheap third generation Transformer toys.

Dodge actually dared to be different... They decided to go for the retro design with a twist. Their concept sports car drew heavily from Art Deco design. It had a multitude of lines running down the hood, and a sense of over-complexity. (Plus it looked like somebody had installed a jukebox for a console.) It was a shame, because the actual car shape was actually quite lovely. Hopefully next year they will return to their senses and design some vehicles that aren't over the top.

Last, but not least, was GM. GM had a highly entertaining booth layout this year. On one side, there was a loud exhibit promoting their latest internal combustion engines. It attracted men like flies with the loud sound of super-charged engines piped through some decent engines. Across from the exhibit was the "future," quietly sitting on the edge of their space. One of the concept vehicles that they were showing was a real, fully functional vehicle. It is a showcase for GM's fuel cell R&D, the vehicle spectacularly showed how radically different of a platform we could have in the future. In this case, the vehicle is literally a platform, a tabula rasa that can be shaped in any number of ways. The entire propulsion and fuel cells system is encapsulated in a 10-12 inch high block. This allows for almost complete design flexibility - and the designers decided to showcase it in an entirely unpractical and dangerous way. In front of the driver and passengers seats was completely open space. As soon as I saw it, I imagined someone's kids or pets leaping around the front, blocking the view of the driver. Not the brightest idea, but it does get the point across about the new system.