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.
Italdesign Capsula
The Italians may have dominated the concept supercar sphere in the 1970s, with Giorgetto Giugiaro and his ‘folded paper’ designs amongst some of the most spectacular motors to emerge from spectacular decade.
But the 1980s were all about functionality, the Renault Espace was on the doorstep and supercars were a little out of fashion, but that didn’t halt Giugiaro’s creative output, the man who designed the DMC DeLorean had one eye fixed firmly on the future when his Italdesign studio came up with the Capsula concept.
The premise of the Capsula was to create a vehicle which could be adapted for every life situation. Giugiaro designed a car that was simply a chassis, on top of which the owner could adapt the vehicle to a number of different uses, family car, ambulance, taxi, school bus and police car - all the owner needed was a screwdriver to modify it to their needs.
All the engine work and technology sat upon the car’s chassis, with the wiring, lights, engine and fuel tank sitting below the feet of the driver and the passenger.
The versatility of the vehicle came with the comparative ease in which the roof, front, side and rear sections could be removed and attached to each others. The range of different specifications was seemingly endless, an idea which perhaps fits in with the way of thinking in today’s motoring production, where the base and engines of some of the most popular cars are simply adapted by the manufacturer dependent on the needs of the market.
Unfortunately the Italdesign Capsula project never took off, Giugiaro may not have been building a supercar, but this didn’t make the car any less expensive and with a starting cost of 40,000 euros it didn’t offer much flexibility in purchasing.