Which Concept Car Should’ve Been Built?

Autopian Asks Concept Car Lamborghini Estoque
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The term concept car has taken on many meanings over the past few decades. Sometimes they’re thinly-veiled previews of upcoming production cars, but the original intent was to showcase a dream, a direction, an intent. These cars weren’t actually meant to be built, but they preview the future of an automaker’s regular cars, or a possible future of the industry itself. However, not all of these latter examples should’ve stayed on auto show floors. Today we want to ask which concept car you think should’ve been built for public consumption.

While there are many magnificent concept cars we’d love to see grace the roads, one stands out in my heart as not just special enough to make the hairs on your neck stand right up, but actually viable. I’m talking about the magnificent, beguiling, razor wire-sharp sculpture of four-door excellence that is the Lamborghini Estoque.

Powered by a front-mounted 5.2-liter naturally-aspirated V10, it would’ve been a god among ultra-sedans, a weapon to surpass the soaring highs of the fifth-generation Maserati Quattroporte, which isn’t to be confused with the Dodge Dart switchgear-sharing exercise in parts bin buffoonery known as the sixth-generation Quattroporte. Sadly, the Estoque was not to be. In 2008, one particular story was dominating the headlines, and it would’ve been a bit crass to launch a four-door Lamborghini while people were losing their shirts. Instead, we eventually got the Urus, which as far as I can work out, is basically a Porsche Cayenne for people with irritatingly expensive hoodies and rehearsed lines on how cryptocurrency is “totally not a pyramid scheme, bro.”

Lamborghini Estoque 1

So, what concept car do you think should’ve been built? Whether it’s something fast like the Volkswagen Golf W12 or something practical like the Toyota A-BAT, we’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

(Photo credits: Lamborghini)

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224 thoughts on “Which Concept Car Should’ve Been Built?”

    2. It could do without that massive, ugly fake grille. It would look better without fake plastic crap and the bare minimum opening required for cooling.

    5. I’m (perversely) glad that cadilliq didn’t make those concepts a reality, then further shoots their own feet with garbage like the… lyriq and… celestiq (had to look up the names). The execution wouldn’t have been anywhere near the concepts, anyway.

    6. Came here just to read this. I remember hearing one of the Cadillac execs talking about bringing one of these cars to the Pebble Beach Concours. A wealthy man offered to buy the car, money no object. He replied that he started out in sales and it was hard to turn away the offer but he had to say no.

  6. Just for epic they’d be NOW…the 1962 Mustang I.

    The two seater, mid engined V4 sportscar…it was the alternate reality version of the Mustang, if Iacocca had tried to produce a sportscar instead of a car inspired by them.

    Sure, economics would have forced Ford to shortly produce the actual Mustang we all know, but would be so cool if there were a year or two’s worth of these running around.

    1. But then the Mustang would have been the Mustang II and the Mustang II would have been the Mustang III at which point the naming convention would have stuck so we’d be up to, like, the Mustang IX by now.

  10. So many…

    I’ll keep it to 10.

    -Opel Eco Speedster
    -Alfa Romeo BAT7
    -GAC Eno146
    -Panhard CD Peugeot 66C LeMans race car
    -GM Precept
    -Ford Prodigy
    -Dodge Intrepid ESX2
    -Ford Prove V (except made RWD, given a 5.0L V8, and made into the next Mustang, slippery aero kept intact)
    -Ford Reflex
    -GM EV1 (should have been sold to the public)

    1. Probe V is a good one – it looked like a Star Wars landspeeder with a top!

      Interestingly, the Probe IV looked more like the eventual, actual Probe.

      1. 0.137 drag coefficient.

        The idea is that you could at least double the Mustang 5.0’s highway fuel economy, and with taller gearing, compete with a Ferrari F40 or Porsche 959 on top speed, on a stock 5.0 V8.

        And then a few short years later when GM is demonstrating the Impact, have a platform to build an EV off of, maximizing the range possible with the craptastic lead acid battery tech of the era, possibly getting 120-140 miles range at 55 mph.

        1. All of those I listed have a Cd value of 0.20 or less, with the exception of the Ford Reflex(a 65 mpg diesel-electric hybrid sports coupe whose Cd value isn’t published).

          0.20 is also commonly cited by automakers as the limit to what they can do, when their own concept car(one of those on my list more than 70 years old), prove otherwise.

    3. Prodigy essentially yielded the Five Hundred, though the diesel-hybrid would have been neat.

      ESX3 would have been more viable than the ESX2.

      1. The 500 was the Prodigy, without the slippery aerodynamics of the Prodigy. The aero is mostly what made the Prodigy get 70 mpg, another car once again ruined for “styling”.

  11. RX Vision

    My fucking god I still go back and look at it periodically. And yeah, it’s not gonna sell in crazy numbers, but it might literally go on to join the Audi R8 in terms of crazy effective halo cars

    If they sell several thousand a year and make people list after Mazdas again, job done

  14. Audi Steppenwolf concept from 2000. It was so far ahead of its time. Could be built today and pretty much look like it fits into the Audi lineup.

    Audi Quattro concept from 2010 and the Audi Sport Quattro from 2013. Some of this design made it into current Audi vehicles, especially the virtual cockpit design.

    Also, any iteration of the VW microbus prior to the ID.Buzz version. I’m glad they are finally making one, but it’s the least cool of the concepts.

    1. Came here for this. Lincoln needed an actual halo vehicle (the Navigator may have sold well, but cool it wasn’t) and the Mark X was amazing. Back when, I even thought “or name it Continental.”

    3. Those were cool, but what was with the door having no crease? It looks so out of place like a door off of another year of the same car.

    1. Oh, I’m also missing the obvious answer to this question, all of The Bishop’s concepts should absolutely be made real. He hasn’t floated a stinker yet.

  17. The Chrysler turbine car. They 100% should have used the body for something else- since I don’t think using the turbine engine would be feasible. It’s a truly beautiful car.

  18. AMC’s AM Van. It’s possible automotive history would have been different had AMC, in the 1970s, put its limited resources into the AM Van concept instead of the Pacer. The Pacer was a sales hit in 1975, then sales nose dived. The Chrysler minivan was an immediate hit in 1984 and sold like hotcakes for 20+ years.

      1. It’s the lost hypercar. It was so cool, so outrageous, and so tragic that it never happened. It had a quad turbo V12 making 850 horsepower in a car that weighed less than 3,000 pounds! It could allegedly break the 3 second mark in the 0-60 and top speed (not sure if it was ever actually tested or if it was just on paper) was 248.

        It was basically an American Veyron and it made for an obscure poster car of sorts for those of us who were young and impressionable around that time. To this day I remain sad that it never happened and I’m glad someone else here appreciates it 🙂

        1. I wish I had a poster of it! I’ve been debating spending the $40+ on a scale model of one!
          It really would’ve been the American hypercar, and one hellva statement. All the specs, the looks, and it wouldn’t even have been that weird coming from Chrysler!
          I’ll love it until it kills me. It was far more badass than a Chrysler concept really needed to be.

        2. I think anyone who played Midnight Club 3 as a kid wishes the ME Four Twelve made it to production. I was fortunate enough to see the real thing at a show a few years ago and it looks just as good in person as it looked in pictures and games, it made me even more sad that it never made production.

      2. Having to scroll down this to finally see this suggested is kinda sad, honestly.

        I think you got it backwards. Nsane’s comment about the Chrysler ME Four Twelve was early in the thread. We — well, at least I — see the newest comments at the top and the old, early comments at the bottom of the page.

      1. The taillights do look like acne and are an abomination, I’ll acknowledge that. My counterpoint is to ask this: how many hypercars are conventionally attractive? I’m kind of drawing a blank.

        The Veyron is hideous. The Chiron is slightly less bad but still weird. Ferrari hasn’t put out a good looking car since they parted with Pininfarina. I guess if you count the first generation Ford GT as a hypercar it could count, but it was more or less just a carbon copy of the GT40.

        Folks might say Pagani but I’ve always found them to be over designed. My point being…pretty much all hypercars are weird as hell and despite this I wish us Yankees got our own to cheer for. We don’t have Gordon Murray, okay?!

      1. While I have an undeniable disdain for everything modern Nissan, I would have absolutely rocked the heck out of an IDx. I think even worse, is its the exact same formula as the FRS/BRZ, which as we all know has been an absolute success for its class, and would have gone on sale around the same time. Classic modern Nissan, design something great and scrap it out of cowardice, and then proceed to force us to look at the Murano Cross Cabriolet which as on sale AFTER the IDx was unveiled…

      2. If memory serves, even in concept form they pitched it as a CVT-only thing, which damped reception. Why they didn’t at least pretend to want to sell it with a manual still confuses me.

        Edit: Checked around and didn’t find anything supporting what I said, guess I just got hit with the Mandela Effect.

      1. Understandable, but as punishment I subject you (as I have any authority whatsoever) to an intercontinental road trip in a 2014 CVT Sentra, because that’s the painful reality we live in instead of being able to buy the IDx

        1. Good friend of mine was on the design team of the IDx. He’s sort of hinted at what happened. One day I’ll get him plastered and get the truth.

              2. I mean a cello case and a plane ticket can’t be that expensive these days right? Seems to be a pretty surefire way to escape the Nissan board.

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