You don’t need to buy four cars when you could have one of four body styles.
Name: Mercedes-Benz Vario Research Car
Debuted: 1995 Geneva Motor Show
Specifications: Front-wheel Drive, Continuously Variable Transmission, Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic Body, Drive-by-Wire Steering and Brakes
Why It Matters Now:
A four-in-one vehicle sounds amazing: sedan, wagon and cabriolet — all interchangeable in less than 15 minutes.
A car can serve many purposes. One person may buy a sedan or wagon to be a family member, while another person might get a droptop for summer driving. While a pickup truck is used for work, a car can also serve multiple purposes. Mercedes envisioned combining them all into the Vario Research car, a compact two-door vehicle with an FWD layout and a flexible body made of CFRP more than twenty years ago.
Each of the four bodies was between 30 and 50 kilograms (66 and 110 pounds) and provided “high levels of stability and crashworthiness”. Mercedes came up with the idea to create a rental station, where the owner could pick up the body they wanted and leave it there without worrying about time limitations.
The concept featured a customizable body and a traffic sign evaluation system. This can best be described as an early sign for today’s traffic signal detection. It could identify the speed limit and alert the driver visually if the driver was speeding.
Mercedes’ first research vehicle to use drive-by-wire technology, which eliminates the mechanical linkages in the steering and brakes of the VCR, was also the VCR.
This concept is unlikely to be realized as an automaker would not make a profit if it sold just one model at a lower price than it could sell four.