By Yolandi Janse van Rensburg

A concept car has no boundaries when it comes to design and power. It's about challenging conventional concepts and established principles and going beyond the limits set by car designs today. It is a dream and if it were not for concept cars, we will not have supercars today.

Let's take BMW's GINA as an example. An innovative concept pioneered by BMW Group Design opens the floor for this new approach: the GINA (Geometry and Function In ‘N' Adaptations) principle grants more freedom for car design. The question the BMW Group Design asked was must a cars' body be metal? Why can it not be something else that works like skin? The material used for GINA makes the car so light and that affects things like speed and fuel efficiency. Gina in short, is a shape-shifting car made out of fabric. BMW says the fabric skin - polyurethane-coated Lycra - is flexible, tough and water resistant.

BMW's GINA - image taken from www.ohgizmo.com by Evan Ackerman

It's stretched over an aluminium frame controlled by electric and hydraulic actuators that allow the owner to change the shape of the cars body. Want a big spoiler on the back or wider fenders? It can be done. According to the BMW Group Design GINA is resembles a new way of thinking about things that were thought to be carved into stone. The GINA philosophy is in short about being flexible.

Concept cars give engineers a blank canvas on which they can think freely. This affects what cars we will be driving in the future and what would be possible to accomplish. Concept cars are about changing that which is law into the inevitable.

Check out these interesting sites:

www.conceptcarz.com

www.futurespace.co.za

Source: http://autofemme.wordpress.com