Although not very practical, these gravity cars were designed by General Motors for a Southern California Gravity race series. The event was a fund raising meant for charity purposes and had invited all the Southern California studios to compete with their self designed vehicles.
The cars you see in the pictures were designed and created at the 5350 General Motors studio for the race series. After the race, the cars were auctioned and the collected money was donated. The bad part was that the fundraising didn’t quite live up to the expectations so the whole purpose lost its course. But, apart from that we did get to see a couple of good cars out there. Honestly, these cars were the best ones amongst all. They looked sleek and the designs were futuristic. Probably that was the major reason why it grabbed the attention of the press.
About the concept:
We all know that gravity cars need to be extremely light to be able to move fast. In other words, the lighter a gravity car is, the faster it moves. So keeping that principle in mind General Motors created these two masterpieces. The cars had thin wall tubing, carbon fiber bodies, ceramic bearings, and so on. Basically, the company tried to use as many light materials possible and nominal rolling resistance techniques to make it faster. Let’s leave aside the mechanical explanations and gaze at the cars for once.
When I first saw them, I didn’t quite realize that they were gravity cars. To be honest, most of the gravity cars I have seen before were not really as sleek as these. Most of them look like toys but these cars look like spacecrafts actually. Yup, ‘Spacecrafts’ – the term I was thinking of all this time while gazing at the pictures.
For once, I actually thought it’s another Star Wars celebration concept, later on I got to know what this thing is. But I must admit that apart from the beauty factors, these cars don’t really look practical. But then gravity cars are not really supposed to be practical, are they? So for today, thumbs up to 5350 studio!
Check out some more car concepts here: Hawk Car Concept and Nissan 360 Degree Car.
