Sometimes your wallet won’t stretch to purchasing your dream motor. But don’t worry too much, there are some cars that even the biggest bank balances can’t buy, the dream cars that will forever remain a dream. These are the concept cars that never go into production.
BMW X Coupé
Based on the X5 platform, when the Coupe concept was unveiled at the 2001 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, the reaction was mixed to say the least.
“The passionate designers and engineers at BMW have put their hearts and souls into a vehicle that will give the driver pleasure - in every imaginable driving situation,” said the BMW press release upon release. Unfortunately, while the driver’s perspective may have been perfectly adequate, from the outside, the stylings, including the controversial ‘Flame Surfacing’ technique was described as ugly by the critics.
If the X Coupe was launched today, it would probably not look too out of place in market dominated by sportier styled SUV’s, but it is clear that this was a concept that was too far aead of its time. The bold exterior was perhaps more like the Z4 roadster which BMW fans got to drive, rather than the X series for which is was supposedly derived.
Perhaps we shouldn’t have been too surprised by the X Coupe’s intense styling, this after all was a concept which had been designed by BMW’s American chief of design, Chris Bangle, a man who had strived to take the German brand into a brave new world since arriving in 1992. Bangle had faced petitions from BMW diehards, but his philosophy was always to move the company’s image forwards at every opportunity. Bangle’s design style is perhaps best summed up by his successor, Adrian van Hooydonk, who in defending Bangle’s work said ‘BMW design has a tendency to periodically muscle in with big, bold, design statements - to knock down walls - and in the follow-up model, its stylists can move about a bit more in the clean air made possible by its predecessor."