Seven futuristic concept cars from the past that tried to predict today's world

It may be 2020 (how could we forget?) but it feels like our collective ideas of what futuristic design and technology could be are stuck in the 1950s and '60s. Almost ‘Back to the Future’ if you will… There is a reason for that.

The period between 1958 and 1963 is described as the Golden Age of American Futurism which is bookended by the founding of NASA in 1958 and the end of The Jetsons in 1963. This era which also gave prominence to the Mid-Century Modern home and furniture design was filled with some of the wildest techno-utopian ideas and future visions that American futurists had to offer.

As well as ideas on how homes would look, clothes we’d wear and technology we’d use, some of these futurists delved into the motoring and automotive world too. We’ve previously looked at some Old School concept cars that never made it from this era including the Frisky Family Three and the Ford Gyron so any chance we get to look at what people 50 years ago thought about the world we live in now would be like is a great one.

Seven concept cars and creative illustrations between 1936 and 1979 have been reinterpreted to sit in today’s world in a series of digital renders by insurance company Budget Direct. The most curious thing about it all is that those out-there designers and futurists may have been so wrong on some things but so right on others.

The June 1936 cover of Modern Mechanix & Inventions Magazine promised two revolutionary technologies, television and the 300mph Super-Cycle. Sadly, the Super-Cycle and its unnamed inventor were quickly left behind by TV. The Super-Cycle was said to capable of reaching record-breaking speeds on with its spherical wheels while the driver is cocooned inside the bike’s aerodynamic shell. For added safety, there is a cushion attached to the front of the canopy windshield for the driver to lean their head on, as they power forward. And those twin motors? “Two separate power plants are employed, one on each side of the powerful rigid chassis,” explains the author.

Gil Spear started in car design as a specialist mostly in charge of the front end design. The 1939 Plymouth, 1939 New Yorker, and 1940 Saratoga front ends were his designs. Chrysler adopted the wrap-around grille on this unbuilt 1941 cruiser for their 1942 Royal (hence this design has been named the ‘Chrysler Heir’). Spear’s proto-space-age Chrysler tapers to a point at the rear, encasing a maximum of two passengers in the bubble-like cockpit. We can imagine that the designer would have projected the speedometer onto the windscreen since that was one of his proposals for Ford a few years later.

A family vehicle that doubles as a workspace and holiday transporter. Sporting the design cues that were popular back in the 1950s, the driver’s seat and steering wheel is centrally located above the main cabin. While below is enough room for a carpentry workshop and some living space for the kids. Bruce McCall published this interpretation of a concept car in his book The Last Dream-O-Rama: The Cars Detroit Forgot from 2001 to parody vehicles from that era.

American car designer Syd Mead’s most famous vehicles are the TRON Light Cycle and Blade Runner’s flying Spinner car. Mead’s military-funded design for "a four-legged, gyro-balanced, walking cargo vehicle" directly inspired the Star Wars AT-AT. But if you’re more of a Volvo sort of person, consider the XV’61, which Mead designed for the McLouth Steel Corporation. McLouth built the XV (Xperimental Vehicle) for the 1961 New York International Auto Show, boasting that the family car was both road-safe and future safe because it would also run on a monorail road network system. Minimal trim and simple geometric lines just about keep the XV’61 down-to-Earth for the responsible family man with one eye on the future.

Suddenly, the Singoletta doesn’t seem so far-fetched in our COVID-19 world. Put a canopy on a Segway and you have the perfect social-distancing little vehicle. "A speed of no more than forty kilometres per hour. A minimum of protection from the weather. A minimum of space. A minimum of consumption. A minimum of cost." The magazine artist Walter Molino illustrated the Singoletta for the Domenica del Corriere in 1962. But the actual inventor was the mysterious Cesare Armano, a pseudonym for the famous correspondent and science-fiction author Franco Bandini. Bandini’s solution to the traffic pandemic of the '60s would cost a quarter of the price of a Fiat 500, and ten ‘Singlets’ would fit in the space of one car. Plus, its electric motor would have been kind to the environment.

In 1970, the average 4 seat car carried just 1.2 people (today, it’s 1.67), clogging the air and roads. Automotive writer Ken W. Purdy imagined the solution in a Playboy article illustrated by Syd Mead. "Tomorrow’s in-city car" would be a two-seater with a cheap, quiet, slightly greener gas turbine in place of the internal combustion engine. Space is maximised by combining the steering wheel and accelerator into a single fold-away lever. Swing it to steer, twist it to accelerate. The rear unit – including wheels, turbine, and transmission – is detachable to make repairs easier. "A cheap but adequate two-way telephone" comes as standard. Looking for the doors? The canopy flips open and is hinged at the bumper.

Syd Mead’s 1979 anti-gravity vehicle conjures worlds beyond us, being part Spinner and part TIE fighter with a hint of Batwing. "We don’t really know what gravity is but we’re going to figure it out," Syd Mead told Car Magazine, shortly before his death in 2019. "I think that’s the next huge breakthrough in controlling the real world." The Anti-Gravity’s wraparound windscreen gives the driver/pilot a clear view in all directions. But wherever you’re going, you still need roads as this is a hovering vehicle rather than an all-out flying car. Note to city planners: Mead’s illustration includes buffer walls at street level to stop the car’s overhanging fins from knocking down pedestrians.

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