Pictures 1985 Back to the Future Concept Cars

[Rolf]

To celebrate 30 years of the Back to the Future movie I have thought I would research some pics of concept cars from 1985 when Marty Mcfly was hopping into his DeLorean.

Nissan CUE-X:

One of the most fascinating cars shown at that time, sleek Jaguar look body )CD of 0.24) combined with really good high tech interior with some things on cars today like LED instruments and multi function steering wheel. It would have made a great looking production car.

Ford Probe V:

The most aerodynamic vehicle at the time with a CD factor of just 0.137!!!! No production car in 2015 comes close.

Mazda MX-03:

Could have been a styling concept for the then to be release RX7. Check the hi tech interior, its something out of this world.

MG EXE:

Possibly one of the most stunning looking concept cars from that year is the MG EXE, with interior with nice combo of hi tech instruments and luxury look.

Buick Wildcat Concept:

Really exotic supercar looking concept that would have been a great production car.

Toyota FXV:

The FXV (Future eXperimental Vehicle) was a concept vehicle by Toyota that was first shown at the 1985 Tokyo Motor Show. It has features that are only now become popular in cars 30years later!!!

The FXV included both 4 wheel steering and 4 wheel drive with Electronic Skid Control.

The mid-mounted 2.0 L engine had both a supercharger and a turbocharger (with a ceramic turbine wheel), pistons made from magnesium fibre-reinforced metal (FRM), a distributor-less ignition system and a resin intake manifold.
The full colour computerised CRT displays had touch screens which could control the suspension, CD player, air conditioning, cellular phone and 8mm video display. Speed was projected onto a head-up display.

Citroen EOLE Concept:

Another highly aerodynamic designed car that truly is something else to look at. Look at the interior and the exquisite CD player!!!

 

[Rainer271]

This was a really nice idea. Thank you, Rolf.

 

[Rolf]

Thanks Rainer, I love to look for these old concept car pics and stories

 

[Bucketslash11]

the toyota FXV.... 0.0 in 1985! wow, just wow

 

[Rolf]

Another good looking concept car that came out in late 1984 at British Motor Show.

Lotus Etna:

 

[Rolf]

Further interesting info I found on the extremely hi tech items featured on the Nissan CUE-X. This car is 15 to 20 years ahead of it's time. Alot of it's features of equipment etc. were only available in German luxury cars 15 to 20 years later.

Some of its ground breaking features in 1985:

1) Laser Radar beam cruise control that tracks the distance between the car in front (introduced in 1998 W220 S-class).
2) Multi function instruments display. Shows different driving modes. Sport, normal,
Multi info with different colours (available on luxury cars from 2005 and onwards)
3) central cockpit screen with touch screen multi display for GPS navigation and for AC, powertrains and Air suspension settings. (Eat your heart out BMW and Mercedes with I drive and Command only arriving in late 1990's early 2000's)
4) adjustable air suspension (most famous car to bring air suspension to market was 1998 W220 S class)
5) Electrochromatic glass roof (introduced in early 2000's German luxury cars)
6) electronic automatic box (available in early 1990s German cars)
7) twin turbo 3,0 ltr V6 with 221kw (300ps) is nearly as powerful as famous N55 3.0 ltr inline 6 BMW introduced in 2006.
8) adjustable spoilers for reducing aero drag. (Now becoming famous on German cars for reducing drag)
9) run flat tyres (featured on BMW models since early 2000's).
10) drive by wire (introduced in mid to late 1990's German luxury cars).
11) rear wheel steering (becoming available now in BMW and Porsche models)

“CUE-X is an international car, a personal transcontinental express with aerodynamics that include a drag coefficient of 0.24 to allow for more than 250 kilometres ro be crammed into every hour”

Neither the flush-fitting doors and glazing, nor any number of retractable spoilers could achieve this on their own, a suitable power-plant was necessary and so Nissan dreamed up an Intelligent Engine, named VG30. The basics, twin-cam, four valves per cylinder were up-to-date but not exactly futuristic; twin variable nozzle ceramic turbochargers were a bit more like it, but when we start seeing Variable Impedance Aspiration, Latent Heat type intercoolers, whisker-reinforced conrods and bulge-formed hollow camshafts, we know we’re heading further into Star Trek territory.

This was a car which used Drive By Wire at a time when Commodore 64s were still flying off the shelves. There was four wheel drive with variable torque vectoring, and it was mated to an electronic automatic transmission for the first time. The suspension was of the electronically controlled air variety, brakes were anti-lock, HICAS rear-wheel steering was present and it all sat on a set of high-speed run-flat tyres “newly developed” in conjunction with TOYO.

“The high achiever urban executive at whom CUE-X has been targeted is expected to want a car that matches its high level of performance and refinement with a tasteful and extremely well appointed interior.”

If the exterior styling and the oily bits beneath were cutting-edge for 1985, the interior was grabbing the future by the lapels and giving it a damn good shake. The driver (pilot would be just as apt a term) sat behind a brightly coloured information display assembled from two CRT’s and an LCD. Vital statistics were displayed either in faux-analogue or by way of digital bar-charts, depending on how much you enjoyed high-school maths lessons. You could also dial up service information, torque output and various other values which could be plotted graphically.

Equally colourful was the Multi-Information Display on the centre console, which resembles the Visual Information Centre display found in certain Olds Toronados several years later on. Again it centred on a colour CRT, this time with a touch-screen matrix applied, and allowed you access to the following things, listed here in the order of how awesome they were.

*Climate Control settings
*Audio settings including CD player (Pretty impressive for 1985)
*Chassis Information (Ride height, Spring rates, switchable ABS Modes, HICAS settings)
*Map display and route guidance instruction.

Now, this latter feature was cool to an almost unprecedented extent for 1985; considering that Delta L1011s were flying solely using inertial navigation systems well into the ’90s, having actual GPS on a car in the mid-eighties was all the more amazing.

The damn thing even had a Tractor Beam! Well, nearly; the button on the steering wheel marked Laser Radar incorporated both those technologies to measure and automatically regulate the distance to the next car in traffic. It would take ages before Mercedes would start fitting Distronic radar cruise control to their S-Class.

And even longer before they started to fit their Maybach with an auto-darkening electrochromatic glass roof; here to be enjoyed in the CUE-X. And for enhanced driving comfort, the luxurious throne into which he sunk was fitted with electronic ride control which would work in conjunction with the car’s suspension, dampening those last few through-the-arsebone nuances that the air-ride couldn’t conquer. Meanwhile, the front seat passenger could recline on their relaxer seat, affording multiple articulation for support in the right places during the longest of journeys.

“Nothing in CUE-X is beyond the realm of practical reality, including the fundamental design concept. This does not mean you can expect Nissan to market a car based on CUE-X in the near future, but it does mean that CUE-X is meant to be taken seriously.”

As I mentioned earlier, I love concept cars, and my rose-tinted specs tell me that the concept cars of the past were more exciting than those of today. The reason for this is that a concept car typically ends up being very much of its time. The CUE-X, although a whole lot of the technology showcased would turn up on regular cars within the next twenty years, it’s interesting to see just how many obvious omissions there are.
For example, even though steering wheel airbags were already available on several markets, there are none in the CUE-X. And though there is an integrated telephone, nobody had guessed that there might end up being a wireless connection possible between the car and your own mobile phone. We take Bluetooth absolutely for granted today, and it’s hard to think back to a time where the very concept was more out there than, say, radar / laser cruise control.

 

[Mr Robert]

Who would have known that the NSX was based off a Mazda concept car (MX-03)

 

[Sonder]

TOP IDEA and wow many cool cars! Would love to have them all!
For me one of the most elegant concept car was the Renault Initiale Paris, just gorgeous:

PICTURES:
=> http://www.carstyling.ru/ru/car/1995_renault_initiale/

VIDEO:
=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZReF7-C6IY