Mercedes-Benz Simplex 'hotrod' concept busts out

Everything old becomes new again.

That's the thinking behind a wild new design concept, the Mercedes-Benz Simplex, revealed today at the Mercedes-Benz new advanced design centre on the Côte d'Azur in France.

Paying homage to the 1902 Mercedes Simplex race car designed by Wilhelm Maybach, the striking concept car design has no roof or windscreen, and wheels that look like they belong in the Blade Runner movies.

Powered by an electric motor, the Mercedes-Benz Simplex concept was created to celebrate the brand's newest design studio located in the 'French Silicon Valley' near Nice, and marks an evolutionary milestone of sorts for the brand's design language.

The Simplex concept features unique running gear and solid wheel rims around which giant tyres rotate thanks to some clever engineering… and is a little more advanced than the wooden spokes of its predecessor.

"It's a metaphorical design," Daimler's chief designer Gorden Wagener told carsales.com.au moments after the covers were whipped off the design in France.

"It amplifies our return to the Côte d'Azur. It’s a very design-driven car and the name, Simplex, highlights its design simplicity, the surfacing, but also the concept."

Instead of a boot there’s custom-made Benz luggage hanging off the back of the car, and its bucket seat and long nose is evocative of classic sports cars.

"It's a kind of hotrod design, right!?" grinned Wagener.

Purely a design concept and a celebration of what the new design centre in France can achieve – and something that will almost certainly never reach showrooms – the model previews a changing of the guard in terms of design for the brand.

The new Mercedes EQS concept showed that Benz is starting to take more risks with design and Wagener says we can expect to see more radical designs moving forward, as it evolves its sensual purity design language.

"Sensual purity is our aesthetic soul and we need to reinvent that more and more to get to the next level. We keep evolving our design with examples like this."

He says the oddball Simplex concept not only "amplifies the return of Mercedes back to France" but also showcases "…our next level of sensual purity design language.

"We want Mercedes to be loved not just by customers but by society," he explains.

"Sensual purity is like an operating system. We're beyond 2.0 -- this is 4.0 or something!"

Although the Daimler design boss, who oversees Mercedes-Benz cars and even its trucks, wouldn't give too much away as to what we can expect in future, he did reveal that the next Mercedes-Benz SL will embrace the brand's evolving design ethos.

"In fact there will be a new SL, AMG. That's the first SL I've designed," he said, noting that in his 20 years at the company it's the only vehicle left in the entire Benz portfolio that doesn't have his fingerprints on it.

"It will be the one that will be the closest to the very first SL, the 300. We never do retro but we pick up the DNA, we catch the beauty that is timeless.

"That is how we will redefine the AMG brand and our iconic line of cars," he said, grinning broadly.

"So that's going to be cool. And we are having some really, really funky stuff in the pipeline – you don’t have to wait long for it, I promise you."