In Memorium: Bonkers Showcars

THERE ARE countless wacky examples, but I am going to use the latest Nissan Juke variation as an opportunity to bring the bizarre Toyota Delta Beagle to mind, and ensure it has some digital legacy. In addition to convoluted names, both the Nissan Juke Nismo RSnow Concept and Toyota Delta Beagle have triangular wheels. The Nissan cheats by using a track, but in 1991, the triangle was the wheel. Crazy! And so to history:

Rewind twenty years and I am sitting cross-legged on the floor spell-bound by the BBC's Tomorrow's World, a programme featuring the latest and greatest in the world of innovation. Japan was regularly leaned on to create mesmerising trips into the future; pictures of capsule hotels and commuter-filled trains would leave me with an indelible desire to seek my way east in the future. And then I saw the 1991 Toyota concepts. 

These three vehicles were created in response to an internal competition at Toyota to re-invent the wheel. One had legs. Another had an underbody covered in bristles that vibrated, moving slowly across the floor like a washing-machine on a spin-cycle. And one had triangular wheels. Pointless, absurd, ridiculous: I was captivated, and in 2004 I made my first trip to Japan, working at Toyota.






Such flights of fancy no longer exist. Showcars today are more branding exercises and technological showcases: not very exciting for a nine year old. Instead they must turn to computer games such as Gran Turismo to see designers loosen their collars as brands snag loyalty at a young impressionable age.

But will they grow up wanting to be a designer? With creativity so subtly applied to convergent themes in a saturated marketplace, where is the fire that can lure the young minds of the future. Wordsworth said that the child is the father of the man, so if we can't lure children to draw cars, what hope is there to draw in the men they become?