A concept car isn’t meant to be driven. Its meant to get your mouth watering and your blood pumping, just from looking at it. Always a crowd-pleaser at auto shows, they are a glimpse into the future, and a chance for designers to show-off. Radical and innovative thinking on engineering and technology topics can also be explored in this free-form environment where practicality can be put aside for a moment. The Mercedez-Benz Advanced Design Studios in Carlsbad, California imagineered the BIOME concept car (above) which grows itself from seeds.

Last year at the Paris Auto Show, the world finally got to see chief designer Ian Callum’s team at Jaguar dream up a true supercar. The stunning CX75 concept car (top image) packs individual electric motors for each of the four wheels, producing 780HP and 205MPH. The batteries for these motors can be recharged with two micro turbine engines that can be run on a range of fuels, including; diesel, biofuels, and compressed natural gas. Not exactly the garbage scraps Doc fed into his DeLorean in Back to the Future, but close. This spring Jaguar announced that a run of 250 C-X75 cars will be built with the venerable F1 Williams team over the next few years. If you’re wondering how much they will cost, you can’t afford one.

Some concept cars are fully-realized prototypes that can be driven, others are just sketches of a few angles with a wish list of features. Pictured above are the ultra-sleek Ferrari Pininfarina Modulo concept from 1970, the BMW ZX-6 student concept from Istituto Europeo di Design in Turin, and the winner of Ferrari’s international student design competition from Hongik University in Seoul. In 2008, BMW promoted the experimental GINA, a radical departure from the sheet-metal aesthetic we normally associate with cars, and last year revealed the Vision, which has all the bells and whistles you might expect from a BMW concept; gull-wing doors, Tron-lighting, and a full plug-in hybrid engine.

I was able to contribute some ideas for this film (below) created for the launch of the Jaguar C-XF, the original concept car for the current Jaguar XF production model. This car and film revealed an entirely new, modern design language for a brand that had been stuck in the past for too long. It’s one of my favorite spots that Alicia Johnson & Hal Wolverton directed for Jaguar with Euro RSCG:

The idea for a concept car came from the visionary Harley Earl, who was the chief designer for the mighty General Motors in the 1950′s. Earl was the first to incorporate free-form sketching and hand-sculpted clay into the car design process, and the first to create a shroud of secrecy and mystique around new product launches. The GM Motorama car shows were a major platform and testing ground for Earl’s innovations. Originally held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue, the show was later expanded to include other cities around the country. The Chevrolet Corvette was originally one of Earl’s concept cars from 1952 called the EX-122 (below). The following year 300 ‘Corvette’ polo white, two-seater convertibles were built by hand in Flint, Michigan. They were sold for an astronomical sum of $3,498. The original EX-122 concept car has been lovingly restored by a vintage Corvette dealer to mint-condition, and continues to draw crowds and win medals at car shows.

Another famous concept car was the 1955 Futura created by Lincoln (above). Built entirely by hand in Italy at the Carrozzeria Ghia (as in Karmann Ghia), the Futura made appearances at auto shows all over the world, and had a supporting role in the movie It started with a Kiss. The Jetson’s-like car later was modified into the Batmobile for the 1966 TV series. The original Futura concept had a working engine, and featured an innovative new paint finish that contained ground-up pearls. Ford even released a toy and model-kit version of the car to inspire future car designers.

For more on concept cars, check out: Motor Trend Future Vehicles | Diseneo Art | Concept Cars