2008 Peugeot Design Contest Picks Top Ten Future Cars We'll Never See
The initial round of voting in the fifth annual Peugeot Design Contest has just concluded, with the field of entries from design students on the subject of "Imagine the Peugeot in the worldwide megalopolis of tomorrow" winnowed down from over 2,500 entries from 95 countries to ten best concepts. It's now up to you to pick the winner. The ten which remain are the purported best of the best of the best of the submitted — with entries ranging from pod-shaped supercommuters to jet fighter-styled speed demons. Although we've got Jalopnik's take on the final ten below, we want you to tell us what you think in the comments.
GALapagos
Designer: Igor Yastrebov Home: Romania Age: 21 Our take: Like its namesake, the GALapogos is a concept excellent at adapting to a situation, with a transformable wheelbase and track and adjustable passenger compartment.
Peugeot 888
Designer: Oskar Johansen Home: Norway Age: 34 Our take: The 888 is another transforming car which bends at the middle for easy, short wheelbase use in city traffic and a longer, lower layout for high speed commuting. Of course the car has electric motors in the hubs, that's the only way designers can be cool these days.
Rugir
Designer: Onur Güvenc Home: Germany Age: 26 Our take: The Rugir maintains traditional wheels up front but a novel but hidden spherical rear wheel allowing very tight maneuvers when needed.
P.R.O.
Designer: Ke Guo Home: China Age: 21 Our take: P-Peugeot, R-Revolution, O-Formula racing car. This high performance concept takes inspiration from F1 design as well as full visibility fighter jet cockpits to create something we want to have in our driveway right now.
OXO
Designer: Lou Ke Home: China Age: 22 Our take: Here's a crazy one, the OXO is a name taken from the car's shape, that of a pod on one side, a shape-changing "X" in the middle, and another pod on the other side. The aim is to manage parking and driving space while maintaining passenger and cargo space.
Ego
Designer: Emre Yazici Home: Turkey Age: 45 Our take: The Ego presents a somewhat terrifying concept in transit — a single passenger, all-electric, two wheeled commuter. If you ask us, they could market it as the car you'll die in and the coffin you'll be buried in — efficiency!
RD
Designer: Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar Home: Colombia Age: 25 Our take: More or less a three wheeler with a panoramic glass roof, the RD strikes us as something that would actually be pretty fun to drive, if nothing but for the novelty of the thing.
Vision
Designer: Shinji Numuki Home: Japan Age: 33 Our take: Not a lot of detail on this one, but it certainly delivers the promise of its name with huge sections of glass from roof to floor. We're going out on a limb and guess something like this is pretty unlikely to pass crash testing.
MoVille
Designer: Woo-Ram Lee Home: France Age: 22 Our take: We've already seen the MoVille, and all we can say is it could only have been designed by a French student, the rotating single seat tear-drop passenger compartment, electric motors coupled to spherical electromagnetically actuated wheels, and sliding window door. Its all so positively French, we're surprised it doesn't have a self leveling pneumatic suspension.
Seed by Peugeot
Designer: Yann Terrer Home: France Age: 28 Our take: Now this one is quite clever. The Seed is a car which folds upon itself and "parks" on a flower-shaped storage ferris wheel. Not only that, it does so in a fairly aesthetically pleasing futurism style. If you'd like to vote on this years entrants or take a closer look at the concepts yourself, head over to Peugeot for a healthy dollop of futurism run amok.