The eight best ‘60s concept cars

Plymouth XNR Concept – 1960

Concept cars are usually given fantastical (and often unpronounceable) names but the Plymouth XNR was named after its designer, Virgil Exner. Throughout the 1950s, Ford and GM had been locked in a styling war with fins getting bigger and chrome applied everywhere. This sort of left Chrysler, and especially its Plymouth division, which had decided to market itself on engineering excellence, trailing somewhat far behind.

So Exner was tasked with designing a two-seat sportscar to compete with the Ford Falcon and Chevrolet Corvette. Originally the Plymouth Asymmetrica before being renamed, it was styled by Exner and built by Carrozzeria Ghia in Italy on a modified Plymouth Valiant chassis and powered by an underwhelming straight-six. After doing the rounds of the show circuits Exner tried to buy the car but couldn’t so it was sent back to Ghia. From there it was sold to a Swiss dealer before being offloaded onto the Shah of Iran. From there it went to Kuwait and Lebanon where it was stored in a secret location during the country’s long civil war. Eventually the car made its way to Canada where it was restored.

Chrysler TurboFlite Concept – 1961

The cars of the 1950s had taken their cues from the burgeoning jet age so we saw fins galore, tail lights that resembled afterburners and bumper overriders like nose cones. The following decade was all about the space race and the TurboFlite looked like it had come straight out of the Jetsons. Another Exner creation – and his last at Chrysler – the car was again built by Ghia.

Like a lot of companies, Chrysler was experimenting with turbine-powered road cars, intended to whisk their occupants in comfort and at high speed on America’s growing network of interstate highways. So the TurboFlite featured a (non-functional) turbine unit, a lifting glass canopy, retractable headlights and an air brake. The tall rear wing would appear again later on the legendary Plymouth Road Runner and Dodge Charger Daytona.

Ford Seattle-Ite XXI Concept – 1962

Taking the alternative powerplant idea to the extremes was Ford’s effort for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. The Seattle-Ite was envisaged as having swappable front ends so that different powertrains could be offered for different uses; tractable and economical for the city or powerful for mile-munching interstate travel. One of the proposed options was a mini nuclear reactor…

The car featured four steered-wheels at the front to improve traction and safety, as successfully trialled in F1 by Tyrell with the P34 a decade or so later. The Seattle-Ite also incorporated a navigational computer which would give the driver information on navigation, weather and road conditions. Swappable bodies, flexible powertrains and computer control. Nah, it’ll never catch on.

Ford Mustang I Concept – 1962

The Ford Mustang, now in its sixth generation is the definition of the old school, rear-wheel-drive, big V8 brute and is hard to imagine it as anything else (we’ll conveniently ignore the Mustang II). But it was nearly very different indeed as this early design study shows. The creation of the Fairlane Group, an internal Ford division which investigated future model development under the management of Lee Iacocca, the Mustang I was unveiled in 1962, a couple of years ahead of the road car.

Intended as an American version of compact European sports cars from Triumph or Sunbeam, the Mustang I was mid-engined, compact and it didn’t even sport a V8. Instead a small V4 from Ford of Germany’s front-wheel-drive Cardinal was turned around to be mounted behind the cockpit and drive the rear wheels. About the only thing it shared with what would become the best-selling sports car of all time was the name, because it reminded lead designer John Najjar of the P51 Mustang fighter plane.

Love concept cars? Then wind forward two decades for our list of the seven best ‘80s concept cars.

OSI Silver Fox Prototype – 1967

The Europeans weren’t standing still during this period of frenzied experimentation across the pond and the OSI Silver Fox was one of the bolder experiments of the time. Born of the racing ambitions of Italian outfit OSI (Officina Stampaggio Industriale SpA), the Silver Fox was an exercise in drag reduction and aerodynamics intended to compete at the 1976 Le Mans 24 Hours.

Unveiled at the Turin Motor Show the same year the Silver Fox used a 1.0-litre Alpine four-cylinder engine mounted in the left hand pontoon, behind the passenger seat. The split body reduced frontal area drastically, allowing the tiny terror to hit 155mph. Between the two body sections was a feature decades ahead of its time: three individual spoilers. The front spoiler could be adjusted in the pits, the middle one could be moved by the driver while only the rear one was fixed. Sadly financial troubles meant the car never competed as was intended.

Lamborghini Marzal Concept – 1967

We absolutely love the Lamborghini Espada here at Goodwood Road & Racing. What’s not to like, really: an impossibly low, V12-powered family car from the most out-there supercar maker of the 1960s. Well the concept it is based on is even more outrageous and just as worthy of attention. Ferruccio Lamborghini was a canny man and commissioned the Marzal as a piece of motor show theatre expressly for garnering column inches: “If you present a car like the Marzal at automobile shows such as Geneva, Turin, and Frankfurt all the magazines report on the first page about it. You would rather spend 100 million lire for building such an automobile which is still less expensive than paying for all the advertising.”

Designed by Marcello Gandini at Bertone, suspension, steering and brakes were taken from the Espada which also donated half its engine as mounted in the rear of the car was a 2.0-litre straight-six. That of course allowed for the incredibly low bonnet line with its sleek sextuplet of headlights (underneath which incidentally was a quantity of metal blocks, including a small anvil, in order to level out the ride height). Access to the cabin was through huge and almost entirely glazed gullwing doors and the interior was, naturally, silver.

Dodge Deora Concept – 1967

So what links the Marzal and a Dodge concept for a futuristic pick-up truck? Both were immortalised for a generation of kids in the first Hot Wheels line-up. The Deora was commissioned by two Detroit based customisers, brothers Mike and Larry Alexander to showcase their fabrication skills. But as the design suggests the creative vision was that of a native son of California, Harry Bentley Bradley. Based on the new Dodge A100 cab-over-engine pick-up truck Bradley’s design moved the engine and transmission back into the bed, along with the radiator and fuel tank. This of course made it rather crowded back there so Bradley hid the whole lot under a hard tonneau cover (the radiator drew air upwards through holes in the floor).

But this engineering effort allowed for the Deora’s most memorable feature, the split front entryway. An electrically lifting windscreen separated from the lower metal section which then pivoted around a central point to allow driver and passenger access. The dragster-style butterfly steering wheel was mounted on a pivoting arm and locked into place for the car to be driven. Thankfully the pedals were already floor mounted. Dodge loved the car so much it hired it from the Alexander Brothers to do the rounds of the show circuit, billing it as a new advance in vehicle styling.

Holden Hurricane Concept – 1969

The Holden Hurricane brings the total number of Australian concepts cars I can name to two. The other also being a Holden, the Efijy from 2005. Unlike that retro-futuristic pastiche however the Hurricane was genuinely ahead of its time. By decades in fact. Another canopy car, the Hurricane’s moved up and forwards, taking a bite out of the side of the car as well. The seats then motored in the same fashion to allow easier entry and egress.

An inch lower than a Ford GT40, the Hurricane used a mid-mounted Holden V8 and envisaged a system called Pathfinder which guided the driver using signals from magnetic strips embedded into the road surface. Other features well ahead of their time included automatic climate control called Comfortron, an auto-tuning radio and even a back-up camera using a CCTV screen mounted in the centre console. The car was advanced enough that Holden actually described it as a research vehicle for studying long range technological developments.