Five Things: 90s supercar concepts we wish had made production
Monday, 15 March 2021
The 1990s was a very fertile decade for supercars, with some of the greatest and wildest concepts ever that led to some of the greatest supercars ever, as well as the current breed of hypercars.
But there were a lot of those brilliant concepts that didn’t make it into production, so today we take a look at five that didn't make it into production, but we really wish they had.
Bentley Hunaudières
Back in the 1990s Volkswagen supremo, the late Ferdinand Piech, was determined to build the fastest most super supercar the world had ever seen. Only he wasn’t sure which of the company’s brands badges it would wear, so he tested the waters with the magnificent 8.0-litre W16 Bentley Hunaudières that appeared at the 1999 Geneva motor show.
**READ MORE:
* Cars that should have succeeded… but didn't
* Five Things: cars with downsized engines
* World's fastest police car is a Bugatti Veyron
* The five times that Audi almost made the R8 supercar
**
Based on the Lamborghini Diablo’s platform, the Hunaudières was named after the famous straight at Le Mans where Sir Tim Birkin overtook Rudolf Caracciola’s Mercedes-Benz SSK with two wheels of his Blower Bentley on the grass at more than 200kmh.
Piech’s supercar would eventually become the Bugatti Veyron, but we would much rather have had this Bentley…
Volkswagen W12
Another Piech creation from the 1990s was the W12 Syncro from 1997 that was both a test bed for Volkswagen's W12 engine and just to prove a point.
A rare concept car in that it was fully drivable, the W12 in all its guises packed VW’s then-new 309kW 5.6-litre W12 engine (cranked up to 441kW for the W12 Nardo from 2001) that would later be used in the Phaeton and Touareg, as well as the Audi A8 and Bentley Continental GT and Flying Spur.
And the point it was supposed to prove? That was that Volkswagen could build a supercar as fast as anything else out there. Which, of course like the Bentley, eventually led to the Bugatti Veyron.
Ford GT90
Ford’s 1995 “spiritual successor” to the legendary GT40 was also the ultimate expression of its controversial “New Edge” design philosophy that would eventually give us the AU Falcon.
But unlike the droopy Aussie Ford, the GT90 looked spectacular with all its severe lines and sharp edges.
The GT90 sat on the Jaguar XJ220’s chassis and used that car’s transmission (a five-speed manual!), but packed a magnificent 5.9-litre quad-turbo V12 that was good for 537kW and was based on Ford’s modular V8.
While, sadly, it never made production, it did become a virtual star, featuring in more than a dozen racing video games in the 1990s and early 2000s.
BMW Nazca
This one never had a hope of making production, but we really wish it had. I mean, just look at it!
The Nazca “project” started when the Nazca M12 was launched at the 1991 Tokyo motor show and was the first car designed by Fabrizio Giugiaro, son of legendary designer Giorgetto Giugiaro.
The Nazca made extensive used of carbon fibre (the entire front was made from a single piece) and packed the 5.0-litre V12 from the BMW 850i, which was good for 224kW.
One year later the Nazca C2 was revealed with a redesigned nose and engine tweaks by Alpina that added a further 37kW to proceedings.
Yamaha OX99-11
While the BMW Nazca never had a chance of entering production, the decidedly purposeful-looking (okay, it’s weird) Yamaha OX99-11was tantalisingly close to it.
Built around a Formula One-style carbon fibre tub and packing a 300kW detuned version of Yamaha’s 3.5-litre V12 Formula One engine, the OX99-11 was – you guessed it – essentially a Formula One car for the road. Just one you could take a friend in thanks to its unusual tandem two-seat layout.
Yamaha built three prototypes before pulling the plug when the 1990s financial crisis hammered Japan and the company decided that finding buyers for a $1 million car that was already well behind schedule would be too hard.