Explore the top 10 production and concept cars of 2024

With these 10 production and concept cars, 2024 brims with top vehicles that mark a comeback, pay homage to an existing automobile, and test the abilities of new technologies. This year, some designers and manufacturers revive a previous car design with a revamped look, such as Luca Trazzi’s Porsche 911 Speedster, Ora Ïto and Renault with the retro-futuristic R17 and Honda and Pininfarina with the radical HP-X concept car. In TWR’s case, it’s a tribute to the Jaguar XJS when they add the flying buttresses at the rear of their steel-covered car, Supercat.

Upgraded and modern tech has also shown up in the top 10 cars of 2024, from BMW’s superbrains for the electric Vision Neue Klasse X to the use of machinery to produce hundreds of layers of wood as seen in Morgan’s coachbuild Midsummer car with Pininfarina. It’s also the fuel to the modernized design direction of Jaguar with their recent concept car, Type 00. Unveiled at Miami Art Week, they’ve based its design on the concept of ‘Copy Nothing’, a hint at the future models of the historic brand. There are numerous design elements that stand out in the production and concept cars of 2024, and our Top 10 list reviews their moments and visuals before the year ends.

LUCA TRAZZI DESIGNS ONE-OFF PORSCHE 911 SPEEDSTER

image courtesy of Luca Trazzi

During Monterey Car Week 2024, Luca Trazzi revealed the design of his one-off Porsche 911 Speedester. He describes it as his dream car, given that he’s a long-time fan of the Speedster models. It has taken him, his team, and Porsche’s Sonderwunsch experts over three years to complete the design of the 911 Speedster, tailored to the Italian designer’s exact specifications. Safe to say it’s worth it, from the stark shade of yellow to the thin black frames.

Luca Trazzi’s Porsche 911 Speedster has 18-inch light alloy wheels, painted black with a yellow fineline. They complement the vibrant Otto Yellow body, which appears singular throughout the exterior. When the driver gets inside, the Speedster focuses on craftsmanship with the use of black leather upholstery, yellow decorative stitching, and a checkered pattern on the seat centers. They are all tailored by hand, just the way Luca Trazzi wants them.

RENAULT AND ORA ÏTO ELECTRIFY 1970S-ERA R17

photo by Lionel Koretzky, courtesy of Renault

Reviving a 1971 car may pose a challenge, one that Ora Ïto and Renault are more than happy to take on when they bring back the R17 and transform it into a retro-futuristic concept car. In an interview with designboom, the French designer, joined by Renault’s Sandeep Bhambra, discusses the process of remodeling the R17. He says that the car’s design is cohesive and unified, and that he doesn’t want his car to look like a ‘Transformer.’

He uses ‘simplexity’, or his design philosophy that focuses on simplifying complex design elements. Because of this, the design of the R17, which is available as both a coupé and convertible, the exterior looks uniform in terms of visual style while the interior has a domestic vibe. Ora Ïto shares with designboom that that’s what he’s going for during the design process of the cabin: he wants to create interiors that don’t resemble a typical car interior.

HONDA RESURRECTS RADICAL WEDGE-SHAPED HP-X CONCEPT CAR

image courtesy of Honda and Pininfarina

Forty years after its 1984 debut, Honda‘s radical HP-X concept car returns, and the car manufacturer brings it to the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance during Monterey Car Week 2024. The roof slopes down at the front to form the wedge design of the vehicle, and carved lines on the sides of the car flow as they rise from the bottom. HP-X comes to life as a collaboration between Honda and Pininfarina.

The duo presents a futuristic purple-shade canopy by replacing the conventional doors. They use honeycomb panels, carbon fiber, and Kevlar as some of the primary materials for the design, and inside, the seemingly velvet upholstery is colored in red and purple. While the look is retro, the technologies are advanced with the use of real-time telemetry, GPS, and advanced driver assistance systems.

TWR’S JAGUAR-INSPIRED SUPERCAT IN TOP 10 CARS OF 2024

image courtesy of TWR

A Super Grand Tourer car is what TWR has in mind with the Supercat. The design draws from Jaguar XJS as well as some of the car manufacturer’s racing vehicles, including the XJR-9, XJR-15, and the XJ220 supercar. A design feature that the Supercat and Jaguar XJS share is the flying buttresses at the rear. When viewers look at the steel-made vehicle from the side, they can see the tail climb up until they reach their peaks and become pointed.

The design team uses carbon fiber for the car to reduce its overall weight, and the vehicle comes with rear-wheel drive and a six-speed manual gearbox. Inside, the Jaguar-XJS tribute continues with the leather-covered cabin, from the door panels to the steering wheel and dashboard. The leather seats are made of carbon fiber too, and there’s a fully digital multimedia interface with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility.

BMW UNVEILS NEW VISION NEUE KLASSE X WITH ‘SUPERBRAINS’

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image courtesy of BMW

BMW reveals the Vision Neue Klasse X, an electric smart car with ‘superbrains’. It’s the name given to the in-house developed software of the manufacturer, as well as the processing units installed in the vehicle. They allow the car to have smart driving skills. They come in the form of a control unit the size of a hard disk for laptops or computers and can help the vehicle drive and function autonomously with these high-performance computer units.

Design-wise, it has a large nose between panoramic LED headlights, and the latter is made of layers of glass panels. These lights flicker rhythmically since they’re animated, and the sequence of lights can be customized by the driver. Inside, BMW’s Panoramic Vision comes back. It’s where the driving information and entertainment are projected, displayed at the driver’s line of sight and across the entire width of the windscreen.

MERCEDES-BENZ DEBUTS MONCLER BY NIGO’S PROJECT G-CLASS

image courtesy of Mercedes-Benz and Moncler

Mercedes-Benz and Moncler team up for Project G-Class, which includes a truck from 1990s that they restore into an art piece. This art car draws design influences from the fashion flair of KENZO creative director, NIGO. After revealing truck, there are two more projects that this collaboration has given birth to: a real-life G-Class that’s based on this art piece, and a gender-neutral fashion collection designed by Mercedes-Benz and Moncler with NIGO.

For the art truck, the design teams conceive a removable roof with speakers. When unveiled, the checkered pattern of the benches and seats inside come into view. Outside, the color of the vehicle swings between silver and military green, and behind the truck, there’s a spare tire covered in Moncler wrapping as well as a a gold-coloured fuel can. This shade of gold, along with accents in orange, already hints at the gender-neutral fashion collection by the trio.

BATMAN’S TUMBLER CAR IN TOP 10 CARS OF 2024

photos by DAVID JAMES, courtesy of WBD

At last, Batman’s Tumbler car, which appeared in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, rolls out as a real-life drivable batmobile. The replicas are custom-fit, and the exterior is fully covered in black paintwork. Geometric shapes jut out and protrude, similar to the car in the movie, and some of the primary materials that make up the vehicle and bring it to reality include kevlar, carbon fiber, sheet metal, and fiber glass.

The catch, however, is that this model that included in our top 10 cars of 2024 isn’t street-legal yet. The fortunate owners of the limited-edition vehicle can take it for a spin in big arenas or indoor tracks, but they can’t drive it on the road yet. Better yet, if they want to display their drivable Batmobile as an exhibition piece at home or as a loan to a museum, they can do so since the replica stays faithful to the original car’s design. There are one-way mirrored glass screens installed as well, completing the Dark Knight vibe of the Batmobile.

MANSORY’S FLYING SUPERCAR ‘EMPOWER’ FLOATS IN THE AIR

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image courtesy of Mansory

It looks like magic, but because Masonry ditches the wheels, their concept supercar Empower floats in the air when parked or in idle. The concept comes through after the manufacturer thinks ahead of the car designs’ future direction. With the advent of testing of flying cars and whether it can truly be the future of automobile, Masonry contributes to the discussion by unveiling a floating car that may as well be a design inspiration for their next models.

The look resembles a shark with the fin at the rear of the vehicle, and there’s a stingray-like logo on top of the hood at the front. The paintwork is in gleaming black, except for the silver graphics on the sides and at the tail. The front windows look large enough to offer the driver and passenger panoramic views, and its doors can open upwards, which is a similar style to some hypercar models from Mercedes and Lamborghini.

JAGUAR COPIES NOTHING WITH TYPE 00 CONCEPT CAR

image courtesy of Jaguar

It’s a new era for Jaguar, and a bold one, when they’ve finally unveiled their Type 00 concept car at Miami Art Week 2024. Gone are the flowing designs that suggest movement, the roots of the previous generations, as they’re replaced with sharp lines, pointed edges, and, as described, ‘exuberant modernism’. The car brand teased their following weeks before introducing the vehicle in Miami. The campaign marks their next philosophy: Copy Nothing.

This design direction hints at the use of light, and the car brand draws influences from James Turrell’s work as well as that of other similar artists. Because of this, Type 00 is dubbed a concept car that translates space, color, and perception into an artistic experience. It just happens to be on four wheels. Jaguar says that Type 00 isn’t a production vehicle, but a manufactured one, which is a four-door Grand Tourer, is expected to come out in late 2025.

PININFARINA AND MORGAN UNVEIL COACH-BUILT ‘MIDSUMMER’ CAR

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image courtesy of Pininfarina and Morgan

One way to sum up Pininfarina and Morgan’s Midsummer car is this: a roofless car design that exposes the vehicle’s hand-formed wooden interior and aluminum body panels. The wooden parts are visible right off the bat, from the shoulder line around the cockpit to the control panel where the stick shift is. This design approach draws from boat building, and the duo’s craftsmen shapes them by hand. They created hundreds of thin layers and laminated them together for these sections in the caib. The car then has nine teak sections, which takes over 30 hours to produce.

Pininfarina and Morgan reference the classic Pininfarina design books in the late 1930s and the early 1940s for the car’s design. This is how they retain the familiar Morgan wingshape,e but with subtle changes for better aerodynamics. They partly redesigned the wings to reduce air turbulence, especially in front of the wheels, and improve the car’s performance. A longer tail forms part of the design too, which is reminiscent of classic Pininfarina designs, and the Pininfarina badge is placed on a panel, highlighting the design collaboration.