One of the best aspects of visiting auto shows is checking out all of the neat and fascinating concept cars on display. Their futuristic styling captures the imagination, give consumers an idea of where their respective brands are heading, and above all, instill a sense of excitement.
But, sadly, not all of them make it to production. There are a myriad of factors that could impede concept cars’ path to the assembly line, from safety regulations to the wrong decimal place on an accounting department’s spreadsheet. That's why we’re always thrilled when some actually do make it—in fact, some even enjoy lasting fanfare that sticks around for generations.
Let’s take a look at some of the best concept cars that made it to production. We’ll mostly focus on everyday cars and trucks that are generally very attainable, and save the high-end Italian and British stuff by Ferrari, Lamborghini, Pininfarina, Bertone, Aston Martin, and Bentley for another guide. If there’s one thing that all of these categorically cool rides prove, it’s that it’s important for automakers to be bold from time to time.
The Best Concept Cars That Made It to Production
- Ford Mustang
- Mazda Miata
- MINI Cooper
- Volkswagen Beetle
- Dodge Challenger
- Ford GT
- Lexus LFA
- Audi TT
- Kia Soul
- Ford Bronco
Ford Mustang
Best for: Blue oval-sourced horsepower lovers
Priced from: $32,000
The Mustang kind of ruined it for everybody. The car’s introduction more than 50 years ago was absolutely out of control. Henry Ford II showed a production-ready Mustang on April 17, 1964 to a packed crowd at the New York World’s Fair, the same day the car went on sale at Ford dealers across the country. But what Ford displayed at the World’s Fair wasn’t the “concept car.”
Almost two full years before the big day at the World’s Fair, the automaker showed two different concepts—fittingly named Mustang I and Mustang II—beginning with a non-running, fiberglass mockup as well as a running car that were both shown at the U.S. Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, NY, in the summer of 1962. More than a year later, in October 1963, Ford showed a second Mustang concept—again at Watkins Glen—which brought the famous pony car closer to production the day before the U.S. Grand Prix.
Forty years later, Ford showed the concept of the revitalized D2C-based Mustang, codenamed S-197, at the 2004 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. With very few modifications, it became the production version of the new car that debuted in 2005.
Mazda Miata
Best for: Those in search of lightweight, rear-wheel drive bliss
Priced from: $29,000
In the late 1980s, at the behest of former Automotive News journalist Bob Hall, Mazda began working on a two-seat roadster, powered by an engine borrowed from the front-wheel-drive Mazda 323, turned on its axis and mounted longitudinally in the chassis. At that time, Japanese sports cars had turned into something completely different than the elemental vehicles that they were in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1988, the Toyota Supra weighed 3,500 pounds, as did cars like the twin-turbo Nissan 300ZX. Convertibles had all but disappeared from the landscape. There wasn’t a single affordable, fun-to-drive two-seat sports car available.
Mazda didn’t really show the concept for the Miata at auto shows. It had one prototype, heavily disguised, shipped to California in order to judge public opinion, which was off the charts. The car that it showed at the 1989 Chicago Auto Show was a near-production-ready version of the Miata that it started selling as a 1990 model later in the year. The first full year of production, it sold more than 35,000 examples—proof that enthusiast-centric car design truly sells.
MINI Cooper
Best for: Enthusiasts who need functionality, yet can’t give up something that’s fun-to-drive everyday
Priced from: $29,000
MINI Coopers have seemingly always existed, but they were never big sellers, even in their heyday at home in the UK. They were one of the few cars that England didn’t export to the United States in significant numbers. After the success of small cars like the Miata, though, BMW saw the potential in building a small car that could be exported to the United States.
BMW, of course, already had its own roadster in the form of the Z3, but the German luxury sport brand didn’t have an entry-level car after quickly jettisoning the 318ti. BMW had acquired MINI’s parent Rover, and set about to reinvigorate the tiny car brand, with an eye toward the U.S. The concept it delivered was the 1997 MINI ACV 30, its name an anagram for Anniversary Concept Car 30, to be shown on the 30th anniversary of the original Mini Cooper’s win at the Monte Carlo Rally.
With its bulging fenders, open grille and rally lamps, the ACV 30 pointed directly toward the kind of brand that BMW wanted to launch in the United States. It took four more years and a lot of design changes, but by 2001, BMW had successfully relaunched MINI into a standalone brand.
Nowadays, MINI has proven to be a fun and thrifty addition to the BMW Group, and has even fulfilled its need for electric vehicles by selling as the MINI Cooper 500E. We hope this brand continues on for many years.
Volkswagen Beetle
Best for: Anyone wanting a true design study on wheels
Priced from: $21,000 (new 2019 model MSRP)
It’s easy to forget just how wildly popular the Volkswagen New Beetle was when it arrived here in the U.S. in 1997. It’s also easy to forget just how long it took to get from concept to production. The first New Beetle concept car was the Concept One, shown at the 1994 North American International Auto Show. Like the retro Mustang, the Concept One was designed by J Mays and was based on a VW Polo.
For a concept car, the Concept One hit all the right notes, and never strayed too far from what a production car might look like. A year later, VW offered a second New Beetle concept car, this time called the Concept Two, that was on display at the 1995 Tokyo Motor Show. This car refined all the difficult and expensive parts of the Concept One into something that was nearly production ready.
When the production vehicle arrived in 1998, it was a dead ringer for the Concept Two. That first year, Volkswagen sold 107,090 New Beetles. The second year of production, that number rose by 49 percent to 160,147, a number that Volkswagen never matched again with the Beetle. After years of declining sales, Volkswagen discontinued the Beetle following the 2019 model year.
Dodge Challenger
Best for: Muscle car fanatics
Priced from: $32,465
When Chevrolet made the unwise decision to dump the Camaro in 2002, it left Ford as the world’s only supplier of pony cars. Every single time this happens, light slowly begins to dawn on other auto manufacturers that they can help to fill that void with their own product (See: Nissan Frontier as the only midsize pickup, Jeep Wrangler as the only two-door, removable top SUV, etc.).
Dodge had been watching from the sidelines of the muscle car wars since the Nixon administration. Finally, after 28 years, the MBAs at Dodge decided enough was enough, and they were going to enter the fray with a contender to Ford’s monopoly on the muscle car. The Dodge Challenger Concept arrived at the 2006 North American International Auto Show, and you could’ve just set up a booth and taken orders for it right then and there.
A handful of items from the concept didn’t make it to production, like the full-width neon taillamp, functional scoops, carbon fiber racing stripes, and “CHALLENGER” lettering on the rear flanks. But the overall look and feel of the production Challenger—and, most importantly, the wheel size in proportion to the wheel opening—hewed very closely to the design of the concept car.
Production-wise, the final top-level, 2023 model year Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye spec put out 797 hp and 707 pound-feet of torque, which hit the pavement like a massive electric motor. Zero to 60 took just 3.4 seconds, mostly due to this thing’s eternal struggle to put such numbers down—traction control or not. Sure, Chevrolet’s achieved supercar status with its Corvette, but for anyone who digs the old-school muscle car way of doing things, Dodge’s beastly concoction is the way to go.
Ford GT
Best for: Drivers who want a screaming, supercharged V8 directly behind their seat
Priced from: $151,245 (new 2005 model MSRP)
Ford hired J Mays away from Volkswagen, and about 92% of the cars the Blue Oval brand put together were influenced by his Retrofuturism design language. A whole lot of them never saw the light of day. Cars like the Ford Forty-Nine, the Lincoln MK9 and the Lincoln Mark X were all killer concepts that were shown at the major auto shows, but none of them had a chance to make it to production, for one reason or another.
Maybe it’s because Ford dumped all its money into producing the Ford GT, which it showed alongside the revitalized Ford Thunderbird, which, in a way, still looked like a concept car when it was sitting in dealer showrooms.
The Ford GT-40 was shown at the 2002 North American International Auto Show and, aside from a little Wite-Out over “-40” on the press release, it was identical to the aerodynamic and straight-up gorgeous production car. And, while prices on other supercars from the early 2000s have held steady or depreciated, Ford GTs has seen their valuations skyrocket toward half a million dollars.
Lexus LFA
Best for: Enthusiasts who want a taste of peak automotive engineering from the early 2010s
Priced from: $375,000 (new 2012 model MSRP)
Lexus made a name for itself producing vanilla entry-luxury cars and crossover SUVs that appealed to real estate agents and Mary Kay sales award winners. It was not in the business of building supercars, and neither was its parent company, Toyota. It took the guy whose name is on the company headquarters—CEO Akio Toyoda, a true rebel and a racing fanatic—to get this producer of supremely reliable, yet boring automobiles to build something this wild.
The LFA concept spent four years in development before it finally arrived at the North American International Auto Show in 2005. When it was unveiled, it was along with the all-too-frequent qualifier that neither Toyota nor Lexus had any plans to produce it. In 2008, Lexus showed a second concept, this time a roadster, and it really turned into a one-vehicle roadshow, debuting at the Detroit Auto Show and then making the rounds at all the events that people who can afford a $375,000 car attend: Pebble Beach, the U.S. Open, the Geneva Auto Show, etc.
Finally, in 2009, Akio Toyoda announced that the LFA was actually going into production with a 552-hp V10 engine. This put it in direct competition with some of the world’s greatest supercars.
Audi TT
Best for: Connoisseurs of small-car driving thrills in a beautiful package
Priced from: $51,200 (new 2023 model MSRP)
At this point, we’ve called out almost every concept car that J Mays managed to shepherd through to production. All of them are similar: a flashback to the 1960s, with modern components and materials underneath.
The 1995 Audi TT Concept development came right alongside the Concept One that Mays was working on for Volkswagen. Development began in 1994 in California at the Volkswagen Group Design Center, and the TT Concept was first on display at the 1995 Frankfurt Motor Show. Fun fact: A lot of inspiration for the Audi TT came from rear- and mid-engine motorsports fare of this era, including the NSU Prinz TT, a rambunctious little coupe that dominated in European hill climb racing during the era.
Both the TT and the New Beetle ride on essentially the same platform, and you can feel that DNA in both of the concept cars, but where the VW is obviously trying to fit the profile of the original Beetle, the TT does something entirely new. The roof height is dramatically shorter than the Concept One, and it allows the coupe to appear much more sleek and compact. Twenty five years later, the TT Concept’s design is still fresh, and when it reached production for the 1998 model year, it was almost identical to the concept vehicle.
Kia Soul
Best for: Entry-level car owners with personality
Priced from: $19,990
“Wait, there was a Kia Soul concept car?” Yep, and it was pretty amazing. Nobody took it seriously when it was shown at the 2006 North American International Auto Show. Car and Driver wrote, “The four-door Soul concept gives us an idea as to what the future Kia Sorento and perhaps other Kia SUVs might look like.” Within two years, Kia debuted the Kia Soul production model at the 2008 Paris Motor Show, and to everyone’s surprise—perhaps even Kia’s—it turned out to be the best-selling model in the brand’s lineup, paying for the development of cars like the Stinger GT.
The Soul concept lost very little in translation to the production model, including rear doors that opened to the rear, and the absence of a B-pillar between the front and rear doors. Indeed, the production car remained quite true to the script laid out by the concept in 2006. Thanks to its forward-thinking boxiness, we’d say it’s an early example of what designers and Hyundai and Kia showing their inspiration from Italdesign of the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Ford Bronco
Best for: Ford fans who are almost ready to buy a Jeep
Priced from: $38,000
We’re not sure there’s another model that had such a long gestation period as the Ford Bronco. The full-size Bronco had bowed out after the 1996 model year, and it looked like the folks at the Blue Oval had forgotten they ever built it, as they were busy cashing fat bonus checks from sales of the Explorer. Eight years later, at the 2004 North American International Auto Show, Ford quietly showed the Bronco Concept, a short-wheelbase, two-door, compact SUV based on an Escape platform, powered by a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine.
The latest Bronco’s design immediately recalls that of the original 1966 Ford Bronco, including everything that the modern off-road aficionado savors in such an adventure-ready rig.
Suddenly, sixteen years passed. Rumors that a Bronco was coming filled chat rooms and Bronco forums. At the 2019 Baja 1000, Ford debuted the Ford Bronco R Prototype as a means of testing the powertrain for a production vehicle that they’d been teasing since about the Elizabethan era. Finally, after a 25-year hiatus, Ford brought the Bronco back for the 2021 model year and the retrofuturistic design is one of the coolest we’ve seen.
