Published on October 29th, 2017 | by Subhash Nair

How to Treat Concept Cars, A Lesson From Mazda

Motor shows are where car brands go to strut their stuff. This is the only time where all the media, enthusiasts and competition are in one place. So, of course, most car companies want to generate excitement around their brand. If they can’t do it with a production car launch, they’ll unveil a new car. But the safest thing to do is a concept car.

It’s the safest thing to do because a concept car doesn’t need to actually work. It can just be a fibreglass mockup with a cheap looking product video and some marketing buzzwords. A good example of a badly done concept car, the Nissan IMx.

Where to even begin. The driver literally parkours his way to the car for no reason. Nissan was supposed to show us a new Z car at the motor show and instead we got this. We’ll address this in another post, I’m sure.

Most of the other concepts at the motor show were well executed. Honda even confirmed that their Urban EV Concept would be sold in Europe and Japan by the end of the decade. Toyota also showed a pretty interesting blend of manual and automatic transmissions that we’re sure they’re working on.

But there was one that really stood out, and by now you probably already know that we’re talking about Mazda.

We could go on and on about these concept cars, but really it boils down to this:

A few years ago when Mazda showed this concept, the Takeri:

it became the Mazda6.

To us, Mazda’s way of treating concept cars is something everyone should emulate. Don’t just use it as a filler. Don’t use it as a questionaire. Don’t use it to test the public’s response. Decide on a direction and show the public your vision. Then make that vision a reality.

So with the Takeri in mind, feast your eyes on the Kai: