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Remember concept cars from your childhood? The long hoods, the low fenders, the crazy angles. What happened to concept cars?
The faltering business of concept cars could have huge implications for the future of cars. The futuristic one-off cars were used to market-test new ideas, flex design capabilities, experiment with new technology, and simply get people excited about what’s next. They showcased what a company could do without budget restraints and regulatory issues. Will they disappear entirely?
The signal that a concept car is supposed to create for both sides, for companies and consumers, is getting weaker. When people are geared to greet concepts with suspicion because they represent anxieties about the future instead of hope, the market research aspect breaks down. When car companies can’t get valid data from that response, their aim falters. And when companies build fewer ambitious concepts because it feels like a waste of money, the one window for both sides to have a conversation about what the cars of tomorrow should look like, or do, or represent gets smaller and smaller. Where does this leave the whole business?
On the latest episode of The Drivecast we discuss the business of concept cars with Jon Ikeda, the former head of design for Acura, what was, what is, and what will now be the norm going forward along with what that all means.
New here? The Drivecast is The Drive‘s weekly podcast that takes you behind-the-scenes on the largest controveries, stories, and characters shaping the automotive industry along with the way our roads look today. Powered by The Drive‘s inside access, original reporting, exclusives, and insights, The Drivecast aims to make everyone an insider.
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Full Transcript
Kyle: Hello everyone and welcome to the Drivecast. I am Kyle Cheromcha, editor-in-chief of the Drive, and the Drivecast is our weekly podcast taking you behind the scenes of the biggest stories, controversies, and people shaping the auto industry.
Joel is on a well-deserved vacation after making global headlines last week with his report about getting tracked by police and nearly arrested thanks to a Flock license plate camera screw up. That story is live on thedrive.com, and if you are not one of the millions of people who saw it, what are you doing? Time to catch up because we got a lot more coming on that.
So anyway, this week, I am stepping back in with another special interview episode on a problem that could have huge implications for the future of cars, and that is the faltering business of concept cars.
Every year, automakers spend many millions of dollars building full-size, one-off concept cars to market-test new ideas, flex design capabilities, experiment with new technologies, and just get people excited about what is next. They are a showcase of what a company can do when they are freed up from pesky things like crash regulations and mass production budgets. Most never make it to the showroom, at least not without a lot of compromises, but that is not the point. The point is to push, see what happens, and apply those findings to the cars of tomorrow.
Historically, this has all worked pretty well. An amazing concept car can turn someone into a brand loyalist for life, and you can trace almost every element of a new car in 2026 back through initial concepts over decades. But we cover a lot of concept car reveals on the Drive, and in the last few years, I have noticed something shift. They don’t really have that magic pull on the public anymore. Outside the occasional home run, more often, they are making people mad. Too many screens, too much tech, too ugly, too cold, not enough cylinders—whatever, you name it.
And okay, people like to complain online, water is wet, what else is new? But there is something bigger going on here. Concept cars are a tangible glimpse of the future, and 20 or 30 years ago, they were being made to explore a much wider range of hopeful ideas about what that could be. Today, the future of cars feels narrower, grimmer, more expensive, and more software-defined. Automakers have cut back on how many concepts they are making because a CGI render is a lot cheaper, and the ones they are making are primarily trying to solve the massive twin challenges of electrification and self-driving technologies. There is just a big convergence happening.
I am generalizing because not every concept is a tank-like crossover or an autonomous electric blob. Some cool stuff is still being made—look at the Mazda Iconic SP or any recent concept from Genesis. But overall trust that concept cars will actually lead to better, more desirable production cars is at an all-time low.
And here is why this is a problem. The signal that a concept car is supposed to create for both sides, for companies and consumers, is getting weaker. When people are geared to greet concepts with suspicion because they represent anxieties about the future instead of hope, the market research aspect breaks down. When car companies can’t get valid data from that response, their aim falters. And when companies build fewer ambitious concepts because it feels like a waste of money, the one window for both sides to have a conversation about what the cars of tomorrow should look like, or do, or represent gets smaller and smaller. I think it is possible it could disappear entirely, and then where does that leave this whole business?
Anyway, this was on my mind a lot earlier this year, but fortunately for you and me, I don’t have to wonder if automakers are worried about this. I can just ask them, and I did. Over the last few months, I sat down with five leading car designers from Honda, Toyota, Stellantis, Hyundai, and GM—all of whom have worked on pretty big concept cars—to get the insider view on the state of concepts today: what they think is working, what is not, and whether there is a way out of this moment.
We just published a big video wrapping up all those interviews on our YouTube channel today, but they were really fascinating conversations. So, here on the pod, we are sharing the full cut of my chat with Jon Ikeda, the former head of design for Acura. He is a candid guy. He definitely didn’t hold back on the mistakes he has seen and made himself, why concepts are harder to nail these days, but also why he thinks they are more important than ever if the industry can get them right. I think you are going to enjoy this one. Okay, let’s go.
Jon: So, my name is Jon Ikeda. Currently, I am at Honda Racing Corporation, running the business development division, but I have a long history at Honda. I am on my 36th year, man. Wow, 36 years. But 25 of that was designing cars. And I had the opportunity to learn design in Japan for six years—my first six years were in Japan—and then I came back here to the states at Torrance and the facility you are here, a lot of Acuras and Hondas here. And then maybe I complained too much about the sales guys, they punted me over to become General Manager of Sales in Acura. But I have been working with the sales side of things for a while now, yeah.
Kyle: You still consider yourself a designer? Like if you were to say one word, “who I am,” designer?
Jon: I would say yes, I would still say that. Well, I don’t know, I think more of a creative guy. I am not an Excel sheet crunching numbers, you know, monthly sales, daily things like that. It is hard for me to work the left side of the brain as much. I can tell you if I am sitting in a meeting, I am still doodling, you know? It is just a way for me to concentrate. So, most of the time I walk away and a lot of, “Could I have your doodles?” you know, whatever, yeah. Whatever, you know, but it is just who I am, yeah.
Kyle: You know, having demand for your doodles is, I think, a sign of something. That is a sign of something. So, my first question is, in your view, both from your time as a designer and your time running Acura, what is the real value of concept cars or show cars for automakers today, also versus say 25, 30, 35 years ago when you first started? Because you have got the ROI calculation of the marketing potential, the R&D playground potential, the feedback potential from possible buyers. So, where do you think the real value lies?
Jon: I think you have hit all of the value points—the, how do you say, the logical viewpoint. Meaning, hey, let’s test some ideas, get it out in front of the market, see what people react to it, and what they say. We can get some data points and whatnot. The other is you want to try something new as a designer, and you are still years out, and if things are well-received, that gives the engineer time to kind of work on something that might possibly become something new for a vehicle, whatnot.
Purely, you know, from a designer guy perspective—and I know there is other design people that might see this—but for me, it is just a excuse for a lot more freedom because it is a one-off. And, you know, a hot rod might be a good representation, if you will, but you get to spend the time and just purely have the room to express something that has been on your mind that somebody has been telling you, you know, “you can’t,” you know? It just opens up the box. And especially, you know, when you are starting out, it is an amazing thing to be able to work on show cars and basically really express your ideas and things, and it is a sense of freedom for designers. So, there is different reasons behind it all, but selfishly, from a designer’s perspective, it is a play day to go out, express yourself, yeah.
Kyle: Which one do you think actually delivers the most value to automakers, though?
Jon: I think all of them do, you know? I think you have to give the designers some freedom to express themselves because out of that—and when we say freedom to express yourself, some of it just purely naivety because a kid out of school or something might not know how to put a production vehicle together, right? And, but it is industrial design, so there are parameters and things you have to hold on to, to make a real vehicle out of it. But you don’t have the constraints, and yet, being naive allows you to push limits that an experienced designer who has gone through several rounds already limit themselves, you know, in a box. “Oh, that can’t, they can’t do this, they can’t do that,” and it just slowly starts to hold back, you know? So, from a value perspective from an OEM, they want the new ideas, right? And it is very important for each OEM to let the guys and gals loose a little bit from time to time to just see what they could come up with that is new. All right, I think the new component of it is very valuable, yeah.
Kyle: Yeah, that is something I have heard before as well—that name a car designer, they you can’t end up designing a really emotional, powerful, long-lasting production car without getting your bones on concept cars. Like it is an essential part of a designer’s development.
Jon: Yeah, it is. Well, and it is interesting, too, though. I mean, I have had the opportunity to meet some big, big design guys from the past, right? For instance, Larry Shinoda, you know, he did the Vette, you know? And he had all those amazing show cars from Detroit General Motors back in the day. And I remember he befriended me a little bit, and we were talking at a bar one night. “So well, you have done all these amazing-looking show cars and things, which one is your favorite? Which is your favorite car, right?” And he specifically mentioned at the time, he loved the Monza GT that he did, all right? And he said just the ideas, the way it turned out, that was his favorite.
Now, you talk to another person like Giorgetto Giugiaro, and we are talking about at one time, “You have done so many amazing vehicles, what is your favorite design of any?” And you would think they would poke at a sports car, or a show car, or something, and he said the Volkswagen Rabbit. And I said, “The Rabbit?” It kind of took me by surprise, but he spoke out like a true industrial designer. He said they were trying to do something that would replace the Beetle, basically, a global vehicle, and to have that car become such a well-received vehicle globally, it really made him feel good about himself being an industrial designer, a car designer, right? So, it just depends on the kind of individual you are and what you are into at that time, but two completely different answers for from a really, really amazing designers.
Kyle: Yeah, that is really fascinating. Personally, I have always loved when a car, the form is defined by the function, and you see, I would say, less of that. I mean, obviously, crossovers are everywhere like people want to carry a bunch of stuff, fit their family, but there is something about how the lines on a car like that are just so straightforward that really helps me.
Jon: Yeah, it is clean. It is simple, and it is so hard to do, yeah.
Kyle: And what is not simple is most concept cars today. How expensive—and I know that we are talking about the present and you have been out of the studio for a minute—but how expensive has it gotten to make a functional show car? Either that has interior and exterior done, and maybe even has a powertrain, or even just electric motors to roll it around? Like…
Jon: Wow, yeah, it is the sky is the limit. But what I do see trending, after the BEV world and the BEV push, is the simplification of interior designs, right? Back when we were doing it, all the little, you know, meters and needles, and everything was, everything had to be made physically and show that it is unique and it is fun and whatnot from an interior design perspective. I thought that was something they had to do in my day. But recently, things are a lot more open and simple, and you have panels and screens, and a lot of the entertainment that occurs to get a driver engaged is digital, right? And it gives you the freedom to choose the color you want, or the meter that you want to see, and the size of the font you want, and all of that could be a lot more customized because of the technologies that are in general. But the space itself has simplified, you know? And I think there is less buttons. So, I dare say probably, man-hour wise, it probably should take less time to make show car interiors of today than maybe in the past where you had 50 buttons and this and that. Now, obviously, even with the new cars, where you do details and things, it is going to take quite a bit of time. But also, 3D printing and all of these technologies that came into play to make these things that we couldn’t make before easily can be done a lot simpler. So, I am imagining, I don’t know, inflation everything maybe it equals out, but if it went equals to equal, to make a show car of the past probably should have cost more in terms of man-hour, I think, yeah.
Kyle: Yeah, that makes sense. I can see that. At the same time, though, we were just saying how designing a show car is really important for a designer’s development. Do you think that having to put that much more time into say the interior to match what was in vogue at the time versus today, when it is there is just less to do, do you think that that is a problem, or do you think it is part of making modern interiors feel more emotional and impactful?
Jon: Well, I think it is a different look and feel, I am sure. And if I said this as an exterior designer, the interior designers watching this are going to say, “He doesn’t get anything.” No, there is a lot more things that you could focus on that are that might not have gotten attention to just improve the whole experience inside. You are getting into aromas and ceiling lighting and mood, this and that, and things that they didn’t really think about too much with older show cars, maybe. But how an individual experiences themselves inside the car is so important now, right? It just is. And there is so many new tools. Like, I have been out too long. I see how presentations are done, you know? It is completely different. Things are moving now in presentations. You got videos and things to give you a sense of feel of what it might look like driving down the street. We had to draw everything, you know? We drew absolutely everything. Our Google download pre-internet was we would spend hours at a bookstore looking through magazines for the right image so we could cut it out and put it on a poster board to make concept boards and something. So, yeah, it is way, way more advanced. And I am sure with the information that, you know, young designers could get these days, the solutions and things are way more unique and different for the time, yeah.
Kyle: You know, your career as a designer and then as a brand manager for Acura kind of tracked with the internet developing and turning into the default form of communication. And the way that most people now receive a concept car is through pictures or video online. I mean, magazines it is similar, but I think we all know that like the way that we used to use magazines and consume media through that, it just it is different. But auto shows have also really fallen off. And in your view, does that change the way that a concept car is developed, the idea that most people are going to see this online versus in person, and that that physical presence isn’t going to play as much of a role?
Jon: I don’t think any designer approaches it that way. You know, there is nothing like the real thing, at the end of the day. How many times have I seen something online and I am like, “Ah, that is kind of weird,” or whatever, and then you see it, you know, you go to Monterey Car Week or somewhere, and you see it, and you see it in the space that it needs to be at, it is like, “Wow, it is completely different than what I thought I saw,” right? But the comments are running because so many people can’t see the real concept car because it is one of one traveling around the world or whatever, and it doesn’t make it to your town or whatever. So, you are basically relying on images and things. But it is always amazing to me how, “Yeah, that is not what I thought once I saw it.” And it could go the other way, too. It looked amazing on the screen, but I don’t know what happened. I don’t like it in real life, whatever. It could go both ways, but yeah, it has you know, it is a physical thing, it is a 3D thing.
Kyle: So, we are talking about show cars that are seen by the public. Behind you is a design study that was not made for the public consumption until it ended up in the museum. What is the approach, both logistically and creatively, when you are making something that is for your guys’ eyes only versus something that is intended for the public? Because I look at that and I think that could have been shown at an auto show, that that could have been presented.
Jon: Yeah, absolutely. And it is interesting sometimes. It goes both ways. You make it internally because what you do want is some alignment. You are trying to build a brand, you are trying to build a certain look and feel that you all want to target. And you got a team of designers that are going to be designing an SUV, or a sedan, or whatever it is, variations of vehicles, but you do want to tie it to some theme so that every single one isn’t completely different, you know, other than the grill or something, you know? So, it is kind of a 10-year vision for internals to say, “Hey, that is what we want to be doing in the next few years here.”
Obviously, for this car to be where it is, it is an inside-outside mockup, if you will. There were several other designers that were they were competing with, but this is the car and the design that won out as the theme model for the 10-year vision, right? And as you work on an MDX, or as you work on an RDX, or whatever vehicle you were working on at Acura, you would come to this, you know, “Hey, you know, there is some nice subtleties of this that is missing in this car. We should try to use a little bit more of that.” And it is a talking point, but it kind of helps guide a direction, if you will, so that it doesn’t branch off into 50 different ways of things, you know? It kind of helps manage a brand look and feel for a little bit.
Kyle: That is fascinating. So, there was a contest between multiple designers to make something that would again never be seen by the public but would set the direction for the brand?
Jon: Yeah, it is for ourselves. Now, if it is liked by a lot of people like this one, they might not let you take it out, you know? Or, you know, it is so cool, we got to show it, let’s show it, you know? So, it just comes down to decisions at certain times, you know, for what. But I can tell you when I was interning at in Detroit, there must have been a million shapes and things that were at Tech Center, you know, at General Motors that never saw nobody ever saw. Amazing, amazing designs and things, and drawings and stuff, you know, back in the ’80s and ’90s that every OEM, I am sure, has. Some make it out, some don’t. But for people that are around it every day, it is just stuff. It is just like going back to school. Yeah, you know, that is Jimmy’s or that is, you know, James’ or whatever. It is just whatever it is, yeah. Tools of the trade. It is part of what they do.
Kyle: It is amazing to think of how many, like you just said, how many designs have never made it out and never been seen, and are just floating around in history for maybe to be discovered one day or brought to the surface. But maybe not, like we will just never know. Crazy.
Jon: Yeah, yeah, I am sure there is plenty of memories of a lot of people and designers that worked in, you know, different companies like, “Yeah, there was this one that was crazy,” or whatever. The one thing that is cool with designers is though, you know, if you have a napkin and a pen where at a bar, it looked like this, and they could pretty much kind of draw what it looked like. “No way!” you know? It is like, “Really? Yeah, we were trying to do that,” you know? But yeah, those there is plenty of those, I am sure, around the world.
Kyle: So, you were just talking about concepts coming out of Detroit in the ’80s, and before we started recording, you you brought up the Japanese concepts from the ’90s. I think, something I have heard from from a number of people, is that they feel like show cars and concept cars from that era were just so much more, I don’t know, joyful and varied, and and seemed to represent a much wider range of ideas versus today. There there is sort of a convergence happening, both stylistically and in terms of the goals of these cars. Why do you think that is?
Jon: Now, this is just my own personal opinion, right? I am sure there is other reasons, but when I was in school, and if I wanted to know what somebody in Italy was doing, right? Or somebody in France was doing, or Germany, I had to go find a magazine that a Japanese print house, publishing house, had called Car Styling. And it would have volumes of these, and every month or so, they would come out and they would talk about a particular vehicle at a particular studio, and they would have concept stories and clay model pictures and sketches that they did. It could be about interiors as well as exteriors. But you you flip through these things, you know, and and go, “Wow, that is so cool,” or whatever.
I think today, because the information is so easy to get, what happens with designers, it is hard to be the only one that saw that and thought it was cool. Right, so you got all kinds of people looking at it, and cool is cool. And before you know it, there is pieces of that cool on somebody else’s sketch and somebody else’s ideas and things. And maybe it just kind of melds after a while. Why did cars in the ’30s and ’40s and ’50s look so different based on which country it came from? Right? And yet, you know, Ferrari is still Ferrari, Porsche are still Porsches, right? And, even with Honda, we, you know, Hondas and Acura, we are trying to be who we are, and BMW, everybody is trying to hold on to their their roots. But it gets more and more difficult. It gets difficult because the information that inspires you, it is just everywhere. It is just everywhere, and some of this stuff that I used to gawk at was like, “How did they come up with that idea? That is so fresh, that is so cool. I need to do more research on British cars’ history or something,” because somebody will tell me, “Yeah, have you ever seen the, you know, the shape of a fender on a D-Type Jag? You know, have you really looked at it, Jon?” You know, not pictures, “Have you really looked at one? And you realize it is like, holy cow, it is way more voluptuous than I thought it would be,” you know? You think all those shapes are the same, and then you walk up to a Ferrari P6 or something, and there is a little crease at the top of that full fender, you know? And these are little things that nuances and things that, um, you might not even notice unless you ran your hand over it. But once again, difficult. It is not easily accessible, you know, to see the details and things like it probably is today. And, but people that like cars, they are looking. They are getting inspiration, right? Maybe there is a little bit of a melding of the mind happening? Not saying good or bad, because cool is still cool, you know? So, uh, yeah.
Kyle: I do agree with you that the intentionality that was needed to find that kind of creative inspiration, it was it was just different when the media landscape was different, and now there is, and in any creative field, right? There is a there is a convergence happening as everyone can have any idea that they want. But I want to run a theory by you and tell me if you agree.
Jon: Okay.
Kyle: I think that especially, we were just saying like ’80s and ’90s concept cars, the gap between what was possible and what was in production at the time was was very wide, especially when it comes to tech and interior tech. And I know you are an exterior designer by trade, but, you know, screens were not in cars yet, so you put a screen in a concept car and you are like, “Oh my god, that is crazy.” And you also had the sense of possibility of where cars could go, just seemed I think a little bit more wider. And now, you got as much tech as you can kind of fit, and it is more about how do you express that tech versus the addition of something totally new. And that just maybe makes it feel like there is less of a of a bridge that a concept car represents to the future.
Jon: Cars used to be the utmost futuristic thing, right? So, it is the closest thing to people trying to make almost like a humanoid robot. It is a machine, but it is a, you know, it has soul. For car people like me, you, you know, it is it there is something there, right? Now, there is a lot of other things that represent those kinds of things, too, right? And so, if you are not a car person, yeah, I mean, look at the transition you talked about, auto shows and things. CES, huge following, right? For what is the future bring? You know? And rightly so. It just people evolving and machinery and technology evolving and things are moving, and yet, mobility is just still a part of it. So, where does the automobile live in this ecosystem, right? Yeah. So, used to be auto shows, and all of a sudden all of a sudden, the car companies start showing up at CES, right? So, there is some merging thing that is just naturally from an evolutionary point of view that has to occur.
And the hard part is the expectation of just regular consumers with just technology in general, with your phone or your iPad or whatever it is that he has to offer. Now, you get that kind of, “How is my car can my car meet that?” For people like myself, who drives an Integra Type S, manual, you know, I am a caveman, man. I am so that guy, you know? When I always talk about this with friends sometimes, it is like, remember when cars came and people were told that, yeah, the days of the horses are over, right? And the guy on the horse just said, “Well, there is no roads to get out there, and it can feed itself, and I take it to the water river and it drinks, and we just keep going.” Mhm. Right? But it didn’t take long before the infrastructure allowed the car to be the best mobility device from going from A to B. And in that evolution, technology is always going to keep coming, and it is going to evolve mobility for everyone, and there is going to be some that are autonomous. And yet, humans are a very finicky people, especially here in the US. We love our cars, and we love our freedom that is associated with that, and uh, it is just part of the process, I do believe.
Kyle: Yeah, we we love our cars a certain kind of way, that is for sure. It is funny you brought up, you know, the future mobility because I also think that there is a particular challenge for designing a concept car that can really resonate both when you are trying to showcase self-driving tech, because that is like an abstract thing in a concept car that doesn’t fully function, and with EVs. And with EVs, I think it is interesting because concept cars of the past for the most part still had ICE powertrains ostensibly, and yet they look crazy, and so you are imagining they took the same packaging constraints that a production car has and somehow have a plan at least to figure out how to make it look like that. But now with an EV, you don’t have those constraints, and so the shape of it has almost less meaning in a way that comes through in in the final product? Do you think I am way off base there?
Jon: Well, no. I think um, I always thought that once everything goes BEV, all right, that well, you don’t have an engine in there anymore, right? So, the whole packaging parameter could change. We talk about like in-wheel motors and all of these things and skateboard batteries, all the pieces start to change, and then you could change the architecture. The only thing that won’t change is probably seats and humans. They are going to be in this thing. And I wanted more dramatic changes in things, you know, to occur, but safety, you know, just purely just safety and things that you just can’t get around, it is always going to be, you know, if not more, you know, regulated as should be, right? Is going to dictate the architecture.
Now, I find it interesting that some of the good transitions like, I am going to say it, but, you know, the Teslas, the first ones, it was just a beautiful car. And I think they were very smart to do it that way, you know? Because, when you design things that are so new, and I used to talk about this with some of my, you know, designer friends, is you go so new, what do you, you know, it is a life life decision for the owner. You know, they might have to be some, you know, they still live in houses that are that look like this, it is still here, it is still around this. What is the proper transition?
For designers, exterior designers will tell you, it is all about proportions. It is not how a sheet metal is bent this way or the headlight shape is that or this, it is the basic proportions of the vehicle that is going to justify if people kind of lean into it as something that looks good or not. All right, and that is like your wheelbase length to how high it is, how wide it is. You know, one of the key things that I always talk about is how high is the cowl of the vehicle? All right? The cowl sets everything because the cowl, the lower you can make it, the lower you can lower your seat point, lower you could lower the roof point. Most likely, your hood is going to be lower, right? And it is not going to go straight out, it is going to probably line down. Your fender probably is going to be a little bit lower, which means you better have a double wishbone suspension or something, right? But that will dictate how big your wheel arch is, and then your overall circumference of the wheel and tire, okay? And we talk about this, it is like, um, if you look at cars, especially Japanese cars that are like late ’80s, ’90s, how come they look so good with 15-inch rims? That is a good question. All right? And it is because the cowl, especially like Hondas and Acuras, the cowls are so low. The hood height is so low because there is no pedestrian safety in those things, right? All right, not safe. But the regulation wasn’t that. So, your fender thickness is really thin.
Now, with pedestrian safety and everything else that is necessary, cowl of vehicles started to get taller, and you got that clearance between the hood and the top of the engine and all of these things for safety reasons. Now, your fender ends up being taller. The cars’ belt line starts to get higher, the doors get thicker, but you don’t want your wheel arch to be the same size as before, you are going to end up with this fender thing that is going to be this thick, so designers will make bigger wheel arches and you need bigger wheels and tires to fill in that space, right? That was going to be one of my questions is why so many concept cars have massive wheels? It just it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and this is where I think a lot of cars are. I prefer my Integra Type S because of the size that it is. It makes me feel comfortable with what I grew up with, I guess, more than anything. You know, size-wise, there is a certain level of comfort that I have for size when I when I want to own a vehicle, right? Yeah, it is proportions everything. Now, if you make it big wheel arches, and everybody goes, “Oh, the wheelbase, well, the wheelbase is still long,” but you are looking at wheelbase from the outside from the inside of the rear and the inside of the front, and whatever body color you got left in between is visually your wheelbase, mhm, all right? So, what happens? Well, that looks kind of stubby, so what do they want? They want the wheelbase to be high, so those big wheels and tires could be further apart, so you get that length that you want. All right? Yeah, it is it is endless proportion games. This is why you have cars with belt lines that seem so high or dashboards that the dash seems so high, and yet they look like they are chopped tops, like the side glass is lower, it is because if you just did it regular, it would just look like a very tall car with a very small person in it. So, you do the chop top look pretty much to make the car look lower and wider, right? Yeah. To get the proportion that lower and wide working for you, and these are all the challenges that designers continually have to face, you know, but it lends itself to vehicles that are big, and now you are talking about 22-inch rims, you know, to just make it look right.
Kyle: And not only that, but also things like vertically oriented headlights because you got to fill the front-end gap, which is not something that Honda has done. Honda has been one of the holdouts in like keeping a traditional face on a car. I think it is very interesting to hear you talk about the cowl kind of setting the height and shape of everything. Clearly, that must have entered the calculation and why Hondas still look like normal cars in a way.
Jon: Well, it gets more and more difficult for everybody, right? So, now your cowl is higher, your engine, everything, you got you meet all your points, the hood is higher than you want, so you might either end up with a power bulges where you could try to lower the fender as much as you can, where the bump is over the engine or whatever, mhm, or you will see companies where they will hold out as long as they can, and then they will pull the headlight as low as they can. So that when you look at the face, it looks kind of low and thin, a little bit bigger forehead maybe. Yeah. But they are trying to make it look low, right? And when you work with horizontal things, it is easier to make things look wider. When you do vertical treatments of things, it it doesn’t lend itself to making cars feel wide. So, yeah, all these are tricks in the trade that every designer around the world is trying to tackle to get their vehicles with these incredible hard points that they have to meet, to look the way they wanted to look. All right, so if you go to a beauty salon and, you know, “Oh, you have a big head, Jon, you know, really you should have longer hair like you, and you could just cut it this way so you don’t see as much of your face.” Right? And then you pull it back like holy cow, you have a full face. Those types of games is being played with designers with cars all day. You are hiding things, you are trying to do things to make it look a certain way, it is just same as fashion, how do I make a overhang look shorter than it really is, you know? Well, you bevel the shape, or make the corner look like it is way over here, so when you are looking at it from three-quarter, it looks like there is nothing there. But if you park the car in a big parking lot, look at it from a hundred hundred yards away or a hundred meters away, holy cow, that front overhang is just huge! Never knew that because you are just kind of up on the car all the time, right? But games like that is what really good car designers are always having to deal with to try to make it look like their sketch, or trying to make it look like your show car.
Kyle: So, it is funny you bring up the idea of trying to like make things that can reach production and dealing, you know, melding creative vision with the hard points and the safety requirements and all that stuff. So, the the Precision Driving concept that Acura did in was that 2016, 20… Yeah, ’16. ’16, yeah. That clearly looked like a show car, like it did not have proportions that were realistic for a production, but you did end up seeing a lot of those design elements come through in the Type S concept, and then the TLX, and the Integra. And so, I am curious when that was made, was it like, “Oh crap, now we have to make figure out how to actually do this in production but and that meets all these requirements,” or was it less of a concern at that time and then you just kind of figured it out? Because like I imagine like the low the low cowl is pretty pretty definitive there.
Jon: That is the curse of the show car. All right? The curse of the show car to production is because you are not constrained, you make it as high as you want, you make it as wide as you want, you could do all kinds of things as you want, and it looks amazing. And then you got to meet the production regulations and things, and if you are too far off base, and you can’t meet the tricks that we were just talking about all earlier to cover for that, then you might find yourself in big trouble. Because you come up with a production version, this happens all the time where it has happened to us, it has happened to a lot of companies where show cars are amazing, why does it why does it production look like this? Well, you we surpassed the limits of our or manufacturing capabilities or being able to we could always make one, right? But when you are trying to sell a vehicle, you are going to sell 50,000 of these a year, there is sheet metal stamping coming out, and you got a certain amount of minutes that it has to go on a line and does this and people have to work so diligently to put everything together so the line keeps moving, there is a lot of things you have to think about—engineering, manufacturing, all of these that are good people, UI have to go through and in Indiana all of our factories have to go through, and every factory, every OEM has to go through. But yeah, you put all that in and sometimes you just can’t you can’t get it, or sometimes somebody, the engineer goes, “I figured it out.”
You know, I remember working on the Gen 3 TL, and they were telling me, I just begged them, I said, look, if we are going to make this car, I need a 235-45-17 as the tire. And I was laughed off the face of the map by experienced engineers, and they were saying, “It is going to be a 215-65-15, Jon, or maybe we will give you a 215-60-16s. Yeah, what are you talking about, 17-inch 45-series tires, are you out of your mind?” It is built on an Accord platform, Jon, you know? And wha, wha, wha, wha, wha, wha, and it took one engineer to say, “If I change this $3 knuckle piece on here, we could put those wheels on.” And we were able to do it. But because of that passionate pursuit to do that by this individual, it helped the car look more like the original concept, right? Otherwise, it would be very much more like the Accords of the time. Yeah, you have to have great uh, what we call Large Project Leaders—the guy that the engineering guy that runs the whole program, right? Dynamics, engine, chassis, design, he is the king lord of this vehicle. If you have the right guy and gets people motivated, you know, you can do a lot of things.
Kyle: Solutions can be found.
Jon: Yeah, yeah.
Kyle: What is what is your personal reaction when people say, “Oh, the concept car looks so much better, they screwed it up in production.” Is it like is it offensive to you as a designer, you just kind of roll it off?
Jon: No, uh, you know, some people might spend the time to explain why, you know? And it is okay, and you could tell the guy just click-baiting you or whatever. It is so easy to but, you know, to complain, and it is their right to, you know? It is a if you are a car designer and you can you don’t have thick skin… you are in the wrong business. Okay? You are absolutely in the wrong business because making a vehicle, you are spending five to six years of your life, right? From a napkin sketch till somehow miraculously it is coming out from a production line. It is a lifetime of involvement and the more passionate you are, more involved you are, probably it will end up being closer to what you wanted it, you know?
In that context of things, it is like a kid, and then you make the kid, you love your kid, and somebody is saying your kid is not cool. You can see how personal it could get, right? And it can be for a lot of people, but that is part of design, you know? It is part of car design for sure. And because it is like that, when you win, though, they you feel good about it. You know, it is okay. The flip side, yeah. The flip side is good, too.
Kyle: It is part of doing anything for public consumption, honestly. I mean, we we get the same thing. We can write a article that people love, they are like, “Oh my god, this is the best thing I have ever read, we are really happy about it,” or in a video, and then we do one that doesn’t resonate as much, and they are like, “You guys are the worst, I can’t believe I wasted five minutes of my life on you,” and it is like, well, all right, well, thanks for the five minutes, I guess, you know? What are we supposed to do?
Jon: There has been a couple of moments where we have done things at Acura where, you know, you had killjonikeda.com come out somewhere, by somebody, right? It just but, I mean, there were memes made about the Integra, you know? And the way we presented that car and introduced it just didn’t, we didn’t do a good job, all right? But at the same time, people were so passionate, you know, about Integra, we knew what we were going to get into. NSXes, Integras, these are real emotions that people have towards a vehicle experience that they have owned. And so, to go away for a while and all of a sudden, you know, she is coming home and the doorbell rings, you open the door, and it is the wrong person standing there, they are going to say something, they are going to say something. Cars are an emotional thing. But over time, they you, you know, I am hoping that not everybody is going to forgive us, but over time this Integra is good, too, because I could tell you the the man that led that program, his first two cars when he joined Honda was an Integra, right? So, when he was trying to find the concept of things, I just sat down with him and said, “Hey, stop overthinking all this stuff. Why did you buy the Integra?” and he told me this and this and this and that, and then, “Why did you buy another one? I bought the second one, why then? Because of this, this.” Let’s make that the best you can. Just make that, man.
Kyle: Yeah.
Jon: Just make that.
Kyle: I love that.
Jon: And they tried, and they had a team that enjoyed themselves immensely working on that car in Japan. And when you have a group of people that are enjoying themselves and are totally to the point where like, “Can we do this? Should we do that? You know, we should do this.” You got a group of people doing that, you know the product is going to be it is raised right by right parents and the right village, if you will, right? I I have fun in my Integra because I I know the people that made it, and I like it, you know? It is all those little details are taken, but is it the DC2? No. It is a different it is a different person. Different era.
Kyle: What what would you have done differently in introducing that?
Jon: Camera angles maybe? As we were saying before. Yeah, yeah, camera angles and things, you know? It was a very high angle and they wanted to do YouTube Live, or whatever. I didn’t even know we were going to do YouTube Live at all, I thought we were going to be able to edit things or what, but it is like, yeah, it wasn’t the best angle, you know? And then people all over the world were, you know, watching the countdown for this thing to come in, and here comes this crazy man, “Here it is!” And as it was a wah-wah moment for them, and it is real, right? It is pure. There is you can’t argue that. It is real feeling. The only thing I would say, and there was memes and I was in the meme, I was fired by Trump, you know? So, you know, and I am there, and I sent it to my kid. I said, “Dad is a meme.” And my kid’s one response to that was “Bro.” Not a good thing. No. But uh, I appreciated the the time they took to express their feeling. For sure. Right? There were others a little bit more forgiving, “give it a chance, I want to see the real car first,” kind of thing, too. But, you know, a year later it was the North American Car of the Year for whatever reason, and then it is on from there, and then the Type S came and more people like that variation of it, right? And things are calmed down a little bit, but it is all part of a designer’s life. It is a very emotional thing.
Kyle: Yeah, I mean, as you said, change, no one likes change, right? And, and when you bring back a name like that, it is inevitably going to be different, and I don’t know, I don’t think even if you had different camera angles, people would have maybe some people would have been placated, but most people are just going to react like that. Yeah, yeah. And it, you know, it is something I wanted to ask about was the the concept you did in 2008 or nine, the A- S- C- C or what is it? The ASCC, yeah. The front-engined NSX successor that never was.
Jon: Yeah, that never was. Except for in a race car, kind of.
Kyle: Right, exactly. No, I love that front-engined NSX car in Japan, that thing is sick. But when you are designing something like that, you have I know that you guys didn’t use the NSX name when it was when it was shown, but that was the heavy implication that that is what it would be, then the recession killed the project. But you are taking ostensibly an iconic name and having to recreate it not just like for a new era with new regulations, but a totally different format. Can you tell me a little bit about what that experience was like and what what you took away from it?
Jon: It was a it was an interesting time because the NSX is NSX, right? And we knew that this is what it might end up becoming. We knew the engine was amazing. But it was an FR effort. And so from a designer’s perspective, okay, let’s celebrate the FR in proportion, right? Let’s not trying to make this look like the NSX and it is a mid-engine or something. Let’s just be very pure with it because it is a show car, all right? And how it if we were able to continue that program, how it values out we will deal with it then, but one of the key things was just keeping it clean as possible. But there is no denying that it was going to be an FR. Right? And at almost too good to a point, you know, some of these it can’t be, you know, people were making all kinds of comments. An NSX is a mid-engine, but that was the direction that the company wanted to take at the time, and as a designer, it is our job to just try to do our best to set it up, if you will, all right? Because that is what a show car is, once again. It is to set up for what is about to come. And so, we didn’t want any confusion. Because back then, you know, the engines that they were making, I mean, I think that thing was a V10 or something.
Kyle: V10, yeah.
Jon: So, whatever people are saying, once they turn it on and hear it, they will forgive us.
Kyle: If only we could have lived in that world, yeah. That would have been awesome.
Jon: They will forgive us once they hear it. But from just a styling exercise perspective, it was just to make sure that everybody understood that it is going to be an FR, yeah.
Kyle: It is also funny that, I know these timelines kind of overlap, but that car never made it to production, and it it sort of reflected the design cues of Acura at the time less of like setting the next 10 years as the one behind you is, but that front end is very similar to the NSX on this design study here behind you.
Jon: Well, I think there is some cues, right? So, we went through several years of, front facial images and things. Every OEM was trying to figure out their character or grill tactics or whatnot. And some of that carried over into the NSX as well as the team working on this car, you know, “What are some of these key elements that we wanted to do?” I can tell you right now that the break point that we did keep for very long time until even now, we still have it, came from a show car, right? That was done if you go back over to the lobby, you can see it. It is what became the original CL. You want to talk about a jump between a show car and the production car, I think they are right next to each other in the lobby over there. You can see what can happen between Dreamland and the reality check of creating a wonderful vehicle in Marysville, yeah. We’ll go check it out. But that is where the, you know, the center break line started. And we we talked about it. It was Acura, accuracy. Accuracy is not vague, it is a point, you know? And there is some reason and logic behind why we did and it differentiated us with what Honda was doing, right? So it was just something that we we were working with, yeah.
Kyle: Do you think there is some tragedy in the fact that you can work really hard on something that gets shown once and then gets crushed, or is never seen by the public, and you are really proud of it, but like no one knows that you did this amazing thing? Like How how does that feel in after all the work is done on this concept car and it may never go anywhere else?
Jon: Depends on the type of designer you are. But you know what they say, is there is nothing older than last year’s show car. Yeah, guess so. From a designer’s perspective, yeah, we could still say this thing is being around and it still looks cool, but if you don’t have the frame of mind as a a car designer where you say to yourself, “There is nothing older than last year’s show car.”
Kyle: Is uh, is is that why you in your opinion, you really don’t see that many retro concept cars? I mean there was maybe a burst of that in the ’90s, 2000s, but for the most part, most concepts are not referencing the past in any meaningful way.
Jon: Um, there is successful ones and not so successful ones in my book. And it is the same thing with Integra. If you try to copy exactly, it could get difficult. It could get difficult. And you will see stuff online now that they look amazing, but if I gave you your true safety hard points and crush zones and everything else, it won’t look like the cool image you made. But I could see why everybody is excited about it. And there is places to play and there is places to push, but it should always look new. There is some nostalgic games you can play, and, it is okay to do that. But it better look new.
Kyle: So, was there an Integra design study at some point with the circular headlights, or did you just
Jon: I am sure I didn’t see it, but I am sure somebody had to draw it, you know? Somebody in Japan, somebody here, somebody was drawing it, I guarantee you somebody was drawing it.
Kyle:Yeah, that would have been cool to see. Yeah, it would have been interesting. But I do I do get I do get the the need to look forwards, as you said, um, especially with something that is ostensibly to do that.
Jon: Well, it is so funny, too, because when when the American version had the round lights, and the Japanese version didn’t, right? Kids over there wanted the round lights, and the kids over here wanted the, you know, the other ones. So, it is everybody wanted the Euro lens back in the days, you know? “I wanted the amber lights on my thing,” and they wanted all clean like you would get with just the red and clear, you know, like the Americans, and it is whatever you don’t have, you kind of want. So, it is very, you know, it is it is your personal thing, right? Yeah, it is situational. It is situational, yeah.
Kyle: Is there a concept that you really wanted to drive home and or steal or and never give it back? Like is there one that you think of like, “man, if only I could have that car,” or, “if only we could have made that car?”
Jon: Personally, no. Oh. Just me personally. That is cool for somebody else to drive. Yeah, you will look amaze—they would look amazing in show cars, right? He just has that persona, it is just not me per se, but there is just too many cool looking cars, right? Um, yeah. Once again, like walking through Tech Center as an intern was just mind blowing. Mind blowing. One of the fun things that they did have is like they would uh, every studio had their own room, but you wouldn’t you can’t walk in, so there is a main corridor hallway that all the designers would use to get to the studio they were working in. Mhm. And there is a T-intersection and they have they would always make things in third scale and so there is a third scale model that some studio made. It could have been Buick or it could have been Pontiac or Chevy, whatever, something really cool, right? Looking at it, it was sometimes it is really weird looking cars. You know, “like, man, I think that is weird looking.” “Yeah, I did, too,” you know, whoever you are you are working with. And uh, it was a point where they would uh, the ones that were like pushing the boundaries too much and people weren’t comfortable with, they would just park it out there. And and the the logic there was after 10 days of all these designers looking at it, and everybody still thinks it is too wacky, it is wacky. It is wacky. If after 10 days of walking around you got half the guys saying, “You know, it is kind of growing on me,” it is new. There is something new, something there. You know, they they used to play games like that, it was fun.
Kyle: That is interesting because I think there is a big difference in how a concept car is received when there is some basis in reality versus not. Like I am just I it is an example that comes to my mind, I don’t expect you to comment on it, but, you know, Audi made a concept car in 2019 that had an extendable wheelbase, you know, it was a GT and then a small sports car. And it is like no one thinks that is going to make production. Like, that is just impossible in the next, I don’t know, 20-30 years at least. But it was also a design study for them, and some of those design cues showed up. But I do think people may be more willing or likely to see it for what it is supposed to be when there isn’t a feature or a function like that that is so obviously never going to happen that it is almost distracting. Yeah.
Jon: Yeah, new too much new is too much sometimes. So, and it is it depends on the individual, right? Yeah. If you do something where everybody likes it, might not be new enough. Might not be new enough. So everybody, “Oh, that is so cool,” everybody thinks this is cool? Ah, it is probably not new enough. So, if you want to be in that weird zone…
Kyle: And Acura for the most part has stayed out of crazy batshit concepts. Like all the concept cars that I can remember from the last 15 years have been grounded in reality at least.
Jon: Well, good and bad. Good and bad. There is some uh, crazy show cars that we I wish we could do a little bit more crazy show cars, you know? Just let just cut loose. Let it rip. So just let it rip, let’s just see what it looks like 20 years from now, you know? Let’s let’s see what happens, let it let it go. And you know, it is it is okay. It is okay to do that. I think it is important like I said in the beginning, yeah. I think it is important for designers to be able to cut loose like that. Some of it is just because the show car to the production jump went from “amazing” to… You know, that kind of pull the sheet and you get that then it is like well, we had enough of that. Let’s not do that, it is what the sales guy is going to tell you. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we got enough. We got enough feedback here. Just let it let it go.
Kyle: So, to get back to the initial question, do you do you see the value of concept cars changing in the next 10-20 years, or pretty much it is what it is and it is, even if the expression is different, it is still going to matter to the industry and to designers and to the public?
Jon: I think it matters. It should always matter because it is a way for designers to express themselves freely. And you are seeing it at its purest form. And all the ideas are very pure, right? And out of those, you know, you play the Pareto principle, 80 of those is junk ideas, but if you don’t do these things, you are not going to find the 20. Right? You are not going to find a 20 that is like, “Holy cow, there is something here.” That would be cool, right? And being a division director at one point and even chief designers, you have to let the the young designers just cut loose. Yeah, you know, you can’t do that, no. It is not about “nos” so much. You got to if you don’t have a listening or having an open opinion, if you are a designer to open to new things you are in trouble anyways to start out with. But if you don’t have that openness to whatever ideas that might be creative, you are going to miss out. Yeah, 80 will be junk, you know, but 20 there is something happening. You know, they You need the churn. You need it. You need it. Otherwise, things don’t move, yeah.
Kyle: That is it, man.
Jon: That is it? All right.
Kyle: That is it, yeah. I mean, I we could talk all afternoon but…
Jon: Yeah, yeah, but we can have a martini or a beer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. doing this sober… Oh. All right.
Kyle: That’s it for this week’s episode of the Drivecast. Thanks to Jon for a fun chat, Honda for letting him speak so freely—not that anyone lets Jon do anything, if you couldn’t tell—our editor Tyler Mark, and thank you for listening.
Remember to head on over to our YouTube channel to see the full video with the rest of the designers and stay tuned there for more extended interview cuts that will be dropping over the next week. And let us know if you enjoyed this one by leaving a comment or emailing feedback at thedrive.com. I don’t want to turn this into a concept car podcast, but we can always drop another full-length interview in the future here if enough people want it.
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All right, we’ll see you next week. Bye everyone.
As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.
