現代概念車

Hello and welcome to the Peterson Automotive Museum YouTube channel. My name is Bea, and today we'll be taking a deep dive into three cars as part of our new Modern Concepts exhibition that just opened here at the museum. Concept cars are used to present to the public new ideas and show the direction the automotive industry is moving both technologically and aesthetically. We will be talking about three Detroit queens, the Ford GT90, the Chrysler ME412, and the Cadillac Sienna. We'll be going in strict chronological order, starting with the Ford GT90. In the beginning, there was the GT40 that brought Ford glory and rewrote Ford's racing pedigree. The GT90 has been considered the spiritual heir to the GT40. The GT stands for Grand Touring, and the 40 refers to its overall height in inches. The 90 in the GT90 stands for the era, 1990s, also establishing a nod to the past rather than a strict correlation. By the early 90s, the American automotive industry was discovering a new reality in which their share of the market was lower, following the Japanese and European invasion of the 80s. Some theorized another contributing issue was also the design or lack of it. Ford knew it was time to change and turned to Tom Scott, who at the time was overseeing Ford's independent studios, the Ghia, the International, and Advance Studios. Scott was a direct man and assessed the situation and its starting point as follows. There was research everywhere with trends and ideas. The one thing I knew was that we couldn't keep doing this oval grill theme anymore, flunked on those jelly bean cars that looked like a floating cigar. So Scott took all the market research and all of the design influences and locked himself into a room with its designers until they conceived a new car. Just kidding. He binned all the precepts and started fresh. The way forward was to dream up a new car that Ford didn't make, something like a road-going racing car. And that's what they did with the GT90 design. Perhaps the GT90's only influence from a previous design can be seen in what Ghia's Camillo Pardo sketched in the early 90s, the Ford Ka 1st Gen. But it was not a theme or a new design language. It was just a sketch. The GT90 is more angular than the Ka, something that Jack Telnack, Ford's global vice president of design, called New Age Edge, and eventually was shortened for New Edge. A mixture of flat planes, sharp angles and intersecting arcs. James Hope and his team can take credit for the futuristic design you can see here at the Peterson Automotive Museum. Curiously, the GT90 is in fact a chopper. The chassis was originally a Jaguar XJ220. Coming from an era when the Dearborn automaker owned Jaguar, the GT90 concept used the same chassis, double wishbone suspension and Ricardo 5-speed gearbox as the XJ220. All of that British engineering was packaged beneath a lightweight carbon fibre body that kept the final curb weight just 3,200 pounds. The interior was even more aggressively angular. A violet blue hue covered the door panels, seats and dash, while an exposed manual gear linkage with two aluminum struts separated the driver and passenger. The centre console had a diamond design with a bevy of silver buttons. It looked something out of a sci-fi novel writer's vision of the future. And then there's the engine. A mishmash of two modular V8 engines with four Garrett turbochargers slapped on. Ford developed the motor in secret under the hood of a Lincoln Town Car prototype. The result was a 5.9-litre V12 making 720 horsepower, enough to beat the McLaren F1, which at the time was the world speed record holder for a production car. The potential for the engine was even greater, with Ford claiming it could perhaps boost the power to 900 if tuned more aggressively. The SVT, Special Vehicle Team, was tasked to blend the components together and they achieved so in a little over six months. Interestingly, the car was made to drive but very slowly. It was detuned, stripped of its turbo, because Ford was unsure the chassis could handle so much power. So the top speed Ford estimated at 235 mph turned out to be only 40. So was the GT90 meant for production? And why was it not produced? Yes and no. It was not meant to be a stylistic exercise. But perhaps Ford was mindful that a supercar was better suited to be marketed through other brands in its galaxy at the time, such as Jaguar and Aston Martin, which they had owned since the late 80s. Cost played a factor too, and generally speaking, it was received with mixed reviews by Ford's senior management and the Detroit press. But things changed when the wider public and international press saw the GT90. Its influence can be seen in cars such as the Ca, Puma, Focus and even the Cougar. A decade later though, for Ford's 100th anniversary, we finally got the supercar we've been waiting for, the Ford GT. Built to commemorate Cadillac's 100th year anniversary, the Cadillac Cien, 100 in Spanish, was a mid-rear-engined, high-performance concept car penned by British designer Simon Cox. The Cien was designed at General Motors' Advanced Design Studio in England and built as a fully working, road-going vehicle with the help of the UK-based engineering and motorsport company ProDrive. It ushered in a new era of angular styling for the brand that still endures today. But it wasn't just styling that helped the Cien stand out. To date, it is still the most powerful road-going Cadillac that has ever been built. More of it later. The Cien was born as a present from Cadillac to Cadillac, but it undermined a more serious issue, Cadillac's market position. It was a luxury brand whose design at the time was sort of, let's just say, conservative. What the company needed was a younger target market which would latch on to the cars at an earlier age and buy one after another. The Cien was cool, like wild at heart cool. After all, concept cars are an automotive fantasy brought to life. Their visions of the future, unconstrained by practical limitations, conceived to propose new technology and styling ideas in an exciting package not necessarily meant for production. Trapezoidal air inlets are milled into the front end surface of the Cien, graphically forming Cadillac's shield-like grille, which incorporates a centrally mounted wreath and crest insignia. Cadillac's characteristic crisp-edged feature line runs the length of the body, suggesting tension in the surface and also adding to the dramatic stance. These main feature lines work together to give the Cien a dramatic and unique look, especially when viewed from above. The blue glass on the Cien was inspired by sports performance eyewear, enhancing the vehicle's high-tech look. Its monocoque chassis and body are made of aerogel composite and equipped with active aero, and Cien's design was inspired by the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor. It was all bespoke, like the aluminum double wishbone suspension, the semi-automatic six-speed gearbox with paddle shifts and even the 21-inch Michelin tires. Only the shock absorbers and the Brembo brakes were taken off the shelf. Another feature ahead of its time was night vision. It uses thermal imaging to help a driver detect potentially dangerous situations well beyond the range of the vehicle's headlamps. The images relayed to the driver via a heads-up display projected on the windscreen. The interior of the Cien features a digital instrument display relaying all of the vehicle's functions including diagnostics and satellite navigation to the driver. Dark anodized aluminum accents reflect the Cien's cool technical appearance and contrast with the leather seats. The interior has a strong vertical theme revolving around the car's center console, which houses Cien's controls and the modern yet classical clob designed by Bvlgari. And then there's the engine. A monstrous North Star XV-12 engine was engineered to power the most expensive Cadillac production cars. But it did feature displacement on demand, which was a fuel-saving technology developed by GM to make its cars more environmentally friendly. And that's what was fitted in the Cien, an earth-moving 7.5-liter V-12 engine with 750 horsepower and 650 foot-pound of torque. The Cien could hit 60 mph in an estimated 3.5 seconds and continue on to a top speed of around 217 mph. In a bid to test public reaction, General Motors paraded the Cien in front of massive crowds at the 2002 24 Hours of Le Mans and then again at the Goodwood Festival of Speed the same summer. Each time, the crowds went wild. It was clear that this car had the impact the company wanted, all in vain, as the project remained a one-off. While Cien was in development, Cadillac was already working on the V-series cars. And while a one-off concept, it was undoubtedly a prelude to what was to come from Cadillac performance-wise. A few years after its debut at the Detroit Auto Show, the Cien took a starring role in director Michael Bay's film The Island. And again, it had a small part in Michael Bay's Transformers Age of Extinction in 2014. And last but not least, the 2004 Chrysler ME 412. Let's start with the name. It's a combination of the mid-engine with four turbochargers on a 12-cylinder engine. It was at the Detroit Motor Show in 2004 that it was presented for the first time as a potential prototype, not a concept. Back then, Mercedes-Benz owned Daimler and Chrysler. Everything led to believe that Chrysler was going to produce its first supercar. But in early January 2005, a press release from the company put an end to the project, certifying the ME 412 as one of the all-time great what-might-have-been stories. Two cars were developed. The first one, this one, was an auto-show version using performance expertise from Daimler, but with limited operational capabilities. A second fully-functional ME 412 was produced for track testing to tune the handling and performance of the car ahead of its proposed production run. So, what are we looking at? The ME 412 definitely looked the part of an exotic hypercar, low and wide for that ultra-low center of gravity. The chassis was made from a combination of carbon fiber and aluminum honeycomb with a carbon fiber bodywork optimized for aerodynamic efficiency. It is very light, 2,888 pounds in total. The low profile of the vehicle contributes to its aerodynamics, while multiple air intakes enhance cooling. The exterior design was done by Brian Nylander, and it is a very bold, yet classic design, less angular and aggressive than the Cadillac and the Ford, yet futuristic in its roof, rear lights and front end. But as per the two previous cars we featured in this video, we can see stylistic hints of Chrysler's future models. The ME 412's interior features leather seats, a carbon fiber dashboard and a chrome-covered center console with a leather tilt steering wheel and gunmetal gauges. Other features include dual-zone climate control, a premium auto system, keyless access and a push-button start system. The roof is made of glass. The basis of the power plant was the AMG-produced 6-liter V12 power plant that was available in various Mercedes models and produced when used elsewhere around 600 horsepower. With the addition of 4 turbochargers and other bits, power was boosted to 850 horsepower. This would have made it the most powerful, as well as the fastest, road-going production vehicle at the time. The 7-speed transmission is a dual-clutch automatic transmission with the capability of shifting gears in 200 milliseconds. Claimed acceleration from 0 to 60 mph is 2.9 seconds and 0 to 100 mph in 6.2 seconds. It can cover a quarter mile in 10.6 seconds. Estimated top speed was claimed to be 248 mph, which is 399 km per hour. So what went wrong? Officially it's too expensive to develop or produce, and ultimately the price was not going to be competitive for a brand not known or trusted to build hypercars. But that's rather boring for us car enthusiasts. Another potential reason could be that Mercedes-Benz, owner of Chrysler at the time, wanted to keep the supercar focus solely on their product, the SLR, and let Chrysler pursue the sedan sector of the market with the 300 and the Magnum. Maybe it's a combination of both. That's it from me. I hope you enjoyed this video as much as I did. Make sure to comment below what your favorite car was, and we hope to see you in at the museum. Bye for now and see you in the next one.