10 More Concept Cars With Disappointing Transitions To Production

Not too long ago, we ran a list of cars that made a splash at motor shows as shiny concept cars, only to end up disappointingly dulled-down for production. Really, though, that list was only scratching the surface of underwhelming concept-to-production transitions, so without further ado, here are 10 more cars that were met with enthusiasm as concepts, only for the versions people could actually buy to receive everything from awkward silence to outright revulsion.

Chrysler Pronto Cruizer

Just look at this thing! The 1999 Chrysler Pronto Cruizer concept (and no, that ‘Z’ isn’t a typo) may have only had a little 1.6-litre four-cylinder, but its two-door body with those exaggerated proportions and swollen haunches make it look like a life-size hot wheels car.

And yet, you can see the obvious family resemblance to the road car it morphed into a year later: the PT Cruiser. Time has not been kind to that car, and far be from us to kick something when it’s down, but the transition from the muscular, low-slung Pronto Cruizer to the miserable, poorly-built, slow, eye-searingly ugly retro pastiche that was the PT Cruiser is really one to forget.

Dacia Duster

Dacia’s 2009 Duster show car was pure concept car. Fancy doors? Check. Tiny door mirrors? Check. Massive wheels? Check. A shape that didn’t really pay much mind to things like visibility and passenger space? Oh yeah.

It should have come as no surprise, then, that the production Duster that arrived the following year looked absolutely nothing like it. Don’t get us wrong, it’s a brilliant car in its own right, but we can’t not be a little disappointed at how different it was.

Renault Vel Satis

The 1998 Renault Vel Satis concept was properly bonkers. A huge, airy coupe with art deco stylings and a computer keyboard that swung out of the dash, it was about as 1998 as concept cars got.

When the Vel Satis name reappeared on a production car in 2001, it was still very strange – a gigantic five-door hatchback designed to take on the likes of the Mercedes E-Class – but had lost much of the concept’s rakish appeal. Some bits of the concept, though, like its giant coupe silhouette and clever dual-hinged doors did find their way onto the even more bizarre Avantime.

Lamborghini Urus

This is a rare example of the concept actually being slightly less outrageous and in-yer-face than the production car it spawned. 2012’s Lamborghini Urus concept still wasn’t what you’d call restrained, but its design, especially up front, was a lot cleaner and less fussy.

The production version from 2017 amped up the design with more creases, more vents and many, many more hexagons, losing a lot of the concept’s purity in the process.

Opel GTC

The 2007 Opel GTC concept offered up much to like – a handsome two-door coupe body, all-wheel drive and a turbocharged 2.8-litre V6 with 296bhp. It was like a Vauxhall Calibra Turbo for the 21st century.

What it was really a look at, though, was the car that entered production in 2008 as the Vauxhall and Opel Insignia. It had grown two extra doors and lost all of the concept car aggression, although some of the GTC’s styling cues and its all-wheel drive V6 recipe would make it onto the hot VXR version of the Insignia.

Land Rover Range Stormer

Scissor doors? Four bucket seats? A centre console that cascaded down the dash like a brushed aluminium waterfall? A 4.6-litre V8 breathing through a raucous straight-through exhaust? Land Rover’s 2004 Range Stormer concept really was something to behold.

When it morphed into the original Range Rover Sport in 2005, though, it was really the basic shape that survived. The doors were normal doors (and there were two more of them), the seats were normal seats, the dash was a normal dash. At least it came with some V8s, though.

Rolls-Royce 100EX/101EX

This one’s nothing to do with the looks, because when the 2004 100EX and 2006 101EX concepts became, respectively, the convertible and coupe versions of the Rolls-Royce Phantom a couple of years later, the styling was practically unchanged.

It was under that long, peasant-repelling bonnet where the disappointment happened. Both concepts had been fitted with an enormous experimental 9.0-litre V16 engine, but the production versions had to make do with the same paltry twin-turbo V12 fitted to the Phantom saloon. Pathetic, frankly.

Ford Iosis Max

The last iteration of this list featured the Ford Iosis, a swoopy concept with doors that opened like an insect’s wings that ended up becoming the third-gen Mondeo. A few years later, in 2009, Ford used the Iosis name again on a sporty-looking people carrier concept that looked capable of making the whole MPV experience a bit less tragic.

Of course, you know how this goes by now. Come 2011, the Iosis Max had become… the second-generation C-Max. Yeah.

Peugeot 407 Elixir

France was a bit obsessed with big, airy, oddly-shaped executive coupe concepts around the turn of the century, it seems. A few years after the Vel Satis, in 2003, came this, the Peugeot 407 Elixir.

An interior full of much leather and aluminium was wrapped up in a handsome shooting brake-esque body, only to be replaced by much plastic and an underwhelming saloon body when the production 407 arrived a year later. Even the eventual 407 Coupe didn’t recapture the Elixir’s excellence.

BMW Z4

This is an example of how even a relatively minor change from concept to production can spoil things a bit. The 2017 BMW Z4 concept was a proper looker – just aggressive enough for a sports car without losing the elegant dash cut by its proportions.

The production G29 Z4, unveiled a year later, though, was a bit… meh. Not ugly, like so much of the stuff BMW would come out with in subsequent years, but with its frumpy front end and long overhangs, it’s never exactly screamed ‘sports car’ to us.