What do the concept cars of the LA Auto Show tell us about the future?

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  • The Vision Mercedes Simplex re-imagines the 1901 Mercedes 35PS.
  • Welcome to the future?
  • Three-pointed star even in the details.
  • Clear rear wheels.
  • Clearly from the future, not the past.
  • Classic touches emphasized with the wood rim.
  • Strap your custom luggage to the back of the seat.
  • Classic homage.
  • Never in recent memory have Americans been so excited about a station wagon.
  • White and black theme with a little silver.
  • VW calls it the Space Vizzion and gets flustered when you insist on calling it the ID.5.
  • This interior is actually quite close to production.
  • VW calls this fabric AppleSkin, and it’s made from apples.
  • The diamond theme continues in the tail lights.
  • Skateboard holders.
  • Touch controls everywhere.
  • Fancy headlights.
  • Front grille.
  • Aero wheels.
  • Spacious backseat.
  • Lots of vents at the front of the Acura Type-S concept.
  • Chopped carbon fiber is another popular material this season.
  • It even extends to the wheels.
  • Angles, chopped carbon fiber, and big exhaust tips.
  • The Acura Type-S made its debut at this year’s Monterey Car Week.
  • There’s a Kia Niro, so of course Kia called its concept the Habanero.
  • Centrally mounted… grab bar?
  • Stylish corner light.
  • Did they forget to match the brake rotor to the brake caliper?
  • Back end is a little bulbous.
  • My, what a big mouth you have, Lexus LF-30.
  • Front angle shows off the vents and lines.
  • Many, many vents.
  • There are more vents in the doors.
  • You’ll need a toothbrush to clean the brake dust. Maybe Q-Tips.
  • C-pillar detail.
  • Angular backside.
  • Custom-cut tires for concepts are always fun.
  • Angular interior.
  • More venting behind the front wheels. And the pedals say brake and speed.
  • Diamonds or triangles appear to be a theme this year—this is the Hyundai Vision T.
  • Illuminated grille badges are becoming more common.
  • “We pursue innovative solutions in design and add emotional value to our product experience through sensuous sportiness design language,” said SangYup Lee, senior vice president and head of Hyundai Global Design Center.
  • Y-shapes abound, extending to the custom tires.
  • Yes, it’s a Hyundai.
  • Angle shot shows off the combination of lines and yes, a few curves.
  • Tail lights.
  • Karma SC2 showing off the doors and long hood.
  • Obligatory six-piston Brembos.
  • The door hinges look robust.
  • Rectangular steering wheels are everywhere.
  • Tail lights.
  • Not sure you’re going to see much from the rear window.
  • Floating wings on the roof.
  • This is the Infiniti Q’s Inspiration. Something a bit like this will go on sale in 2-3 years.
  • It’s going to be a plug-in hybrid, but for some reason Infiniti wants to find a word other than “hybrid” to describe the car’s mix of electric and gasoline power.
  • Front wheel and brakes.
  • NHTSA would never approve these under current regulations.
  • Rear three-fourths.
  • Concept car tires.
  • The back end is rather slab-sided.
  • Glass patterned roof.
  • Glowing seatbacks.
  • Roof makes photographing the interior difficult.
  • Another rectangular steering wheel.
  • Going larger and larger with the Infiniti lettering.
  • The Toyota GR Supra GT4 Concept was made for SEMA earlier this month.
  • Stock headlights still look good on a race car concept.
  • Air ducts look like there’s some potential left.
  • Brembo race brakes.
  • Obligatory spoiler.
  • Stock muffler and body work.
  • Caged but still quite a bit of the stock interior left.
  • Wide track: the Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport R, built for the Baja 1000.
  • Fake headlights, rear light bar.
  • Lots of stickers: for windows, for lights…
  • Spare tire.
  • More stickers.
  • Alcon Racing brakes under billet wheels.

The prophets of doom are right; the auto show is fast becoming a spent force. I’ve been resistant to that idea, but this year’s LA Auto Show was as lackluster an event as I can remember. There was big car news these past days, all of which took place in LA: the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Volkswagen ID Space Vizzion, and of course the Tesla Cybertruck all made waves. But each met the public at an off-site event, and the Ford and VW were old news by the time the doors to the convention center opened for the first press day on Wednesday.

But we’re not going to focus on negativity today. Instead, we’re going to celebrate some of the four-wheeled eye candy at the show. The OEMs might not have brought much new to LA, but many of them did wheel out their takes on the future. Some are next year’s model with some added greebles, others are a view of a decade or more from now and require enabling technologies that aren’t quite there yet. Two are just race cars, built for SEMA and brought along to LA to make up the numbers.

No mind—I asked photographer Brian Won to walk the halls and, like the video game said, try to catch them all. And he did, with a couple of exceptions; BMW had put away its MNEXT, and Kia’s Futuron was also hiding somewhere. Most of the captions are his, and I urge you to check out the massive gallery at the top of this article—the pictures are where it’s at.

Of the concepts captured by Brian, I think my favorite has to be the Vision Mercedes Simplex. It’s inspired by the Mercedes 35PS—the original Mercedes—built by Emil Jellinek in 1901. It “symbolizes the transformation of the brand-specific luxury of Mercedes-Benz” according to Chief Design Officer Gorden Wagener. I don’t entirely believe that, but I love the elegance of the design and the pared-back detailing of this little open-wheel roadster.

Even the more out-there concepts have value. The supplier Magna used the show to announce the final of its first Magna Global Bold Perspective Award, which featured finalists from the US, China, and Europe, each looking 20 to 30 years into the future.

“The students’ stuff happens at a 2D and model level and then it moves its way up. You can even see it in some of the form languages. Some of these ideas would be just amazingly out there, and then two years later somebody has a show car at Geneva,” explained Larry Erickson, global director of design, Magna Exteriors. “Everybody’s trying for something new, you know. There’s always this pressure of what’s next,” he told Ars.

  • Zehao “West” Zhang won Magna’s first Global Bold Perspective Award. “Zhang’s thoughtful concept met the challenge of designing what vehicles might look like in 20 to 30 years by addressing the growing needs of overcrowded cities, while also creating a very personalized and human concept,” said Larry Erickson, global director of Magna’s Exteriors Design Group.
  • “Project Andarta” from European finalist Jake Lockyer of Coventry University in the UK.
  • “Swifter” from China finalists Bolin Sun and Gong Jinyun of Dalian University of Technology in Liaoning, China.

Zehao “West” Zhang, a student at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, won the design with a vehicle for urban nomads.

Magna’s interest in design as a Tier 1 supplier is a way of spotting trends as early as possible, in order to be able to offer the appropriate products to OEMs. Erickson pointed to active aerodynamics—air dams that lower at speed, or moving surfaces in a car’s underbody that channel or skirt the airflow to cut drag—as ideas that are appearing in production cars now that were once the preserve of the concept.

Listing image by Brian Won

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1622883