The problem with the Presto wasn’t that it was too daft. It wasn’t daft enough. The unmistakable handiwork of the Swiss mavericks at Rinspeed, it attempted to solve that age-old riddle of ‘small car, easy to park/big car, fits more people’ with the aid of an ingenious extending wheelbase. Yep, it stretched.
A central electric motor elongated the Presto’s floorpan on the fly, transforming it from two-seat roadster into capacious four-seat roadster at the push of a button.
FOTC has no issue with this. FOTC is all here for transforming cars. The problem with the Presto was that it just didn’t transform enough. It extended by a grand total of 750mm, thus in fact transforming from ‘two-seater’ into a ‘two-seater with small amount of space behind for very uncomfortable rear passengers’.
No doubt there were solid technical reasons for such a modest elongification. But the Presto didn’t need to worry about solid technical reasons. It was a concept car! It was never going to be built! If FOTC’s designing a transforming concept car, it’s designing one that transforms from Smart Fortwo to Taylor Swift tour bus. Realistic? Physically possible? Doesn’t matter! It’s a concept!
Further proof: the Presto’s mooted powerplant wasn’t an onboard plutonium reactor or even sonorous V8. It was a clattery 1.7 diesel. Again, it’s a concept, lads. If we’d wanted disappointing early Noughties realism, we’d have gone to Vauxhall.