Someone looked at a Maserati GranTurismo and decided it needed a copper skin. Not copper-colored paint, actual copper, hammered by hand and shaped into a one-off body. The result is the Peralta D, the
The BMW E1 was a purpose-built electric prototype unveiled at the 1991 Frankfurt Motor Show. Designed for urban driving, it combined four-seat accommodation with lightweight construction. It remained
Imagine being told to destroy a car, only to discover decades later that keeping it could make automotive history. That’s essentially what happened to a remarkable 1956 Cadillac concept that Gen
What was the Mercedes braking bag? It was an experimental underbody airbag shown as part of the ESF 2009 safety programme. When sensors judged a collision unavoidable, the device would deploy a high-f
A delivery van usually gets noticed because it is blocking something. Nissan found another way: give it a face, a rounded shell and the proportions of a snail that has somewhere to be. The S-Cargo
The Ford Nucleon looks as though someone moved the passengers forward to make room for a very important piece of luggage. Its cabin sits near the nose, leaving an enormous rear section between the fin
Among the cars in Citroën’s heritage collection sits something that makes even the company’s stranger experiments look quite sensible: a helicopter. Two seats, a bubble-like cabin and
At a classic car show, a Trabant can attract two kinds of attention. Some people remember one from the streets of East Germany. Others have heard that it was made of cardboard and want to know whether
Before tanks had tracks, someone had to imagine that an engine, armor and heavy weapons might belong on the same vehicle. Frederick Richard Simms did more than imagine it. At the end of the 19th ce
Long before carmakers filled dashboards with screens, an important piece of engine information was displayed outside the windshield. Early automobiles often carried their radiator filler caps at