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Concepts are a great way to showcase innovative designs and features, but these 10 take things a bit far.

There's no denying that concept cars are quite the lookers. Always ahead of their time, concept cars are always futuristic, with outlandish design languages that make our jaws drop. They are everything we want our dream cars to be: technologically superior, extremely unique in aesthetics, and completely exclusive. The sad thing about concept cars, however, is that more often than not, they don't ever make it to production, and if they do, manufacturers have to change them radically to make them suitable for usage in the real world. Then come things like marketing value and the viability of such projects, which ends up taking all the awe and fun out of a ludicrous concept car.

While some concept cars remain prototypes, even more stay only as renderings. Of course, this isn't to say that today's cars are technological marvels in and of themselves, but there is something about concept cars that truly makes them stand out and desirable. This is perhaps because designers aren't bound by any limitations when making concepts. Many concept cars run on alternate fuels, feature modes of driving we've never even fathomed, and look so ridiculously out-there that we simply can't ever take our eyes off. That said, here are 10 of the most ludicrous car concepts ever made.

A concept car from Hyundai's luxury division, the Genesis Essentia was a grand tourer of the 21st century. Revealed in 2018, the Genesis Essentia is an all-electric concept car, with a design that is unlike anything the brand has ever made. Wearing an all-carbon-fiber shell, the Genesis Essentia rides light, and carries several electric units underneath from lithium-ion battery packs.

According to Genesis, the light weight and the electric power propels the Essentia from nought to 60 in merely 3 seconds. The concept car saw the light of day at the 2018 New York International Show, and wowed everyone who laid eyes on it. Far from a concept now, the Genesis Essentia is now just a year away from launch, and the world is waiting with bated breath.

A great mind went into designing this extremely outlandish and futuristic BMW concept car. Anne Forschner, the German designer whose brainchild the BMW Lovos is, trained at BMW, Mercedes-Benz, as well as Mazda. Talk about an impressive resume. A green car concept, Anne's intentions with the BMW Lovos was to inspire people to think and accept things outside the box, ridding themselves of orthodoxy.

The Lovos itself is an acronym for Lifestyle of Voluntary Simplicity. This concept car, which truly looks like nothing you've ever seen before, uses 260 interchangeable and identical scales, which function as solar panels when closed. When open, these same scales act as air brakes for the Lovos. Even the wheels are formed from a set of 12 scales each.

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Revealed in 1999 and built by Bentley for the International Geneva Motor Show, the Bentley Hunaudieres gets it name from a straightaway at Le Mans. A year prior to its reveal, Bentley was acquired by the Volkswagen Group. Consequently, the new management decided to shake things up and built a new plan to increase Bentley's share in the market.

Thus, the Bentley Hunaudieres concept was born, the company's first step in that direction. Housing a massive 8.0-liter W16 engine from the Volkswagen Group, the Hunaudieres, thanks to the modified power unit, churned out 623 horsepower and 560 lb-ft of torque. Massively impressive figures for 1999. A top speed of 220 mph was stated for the Hunaudieres, but sadly, the concept car never reached fruition. How Bentley's brand image would have changed this century is a question we are thus left to ponder.

World-renowned Italian automobile designer Giorgetto Giugiaro is the man behind the Alfa Romeo Caimano concept from 1971. Half-a-century ago, Giugiaro fitted his concept car with a 1.2-liter flat-four engine from the Alfa Romeo Boxer, and mated it to a five-speed manual transmission. Showcased at the 1971 Turin Motor Show, the design was completely unique and unprecedented for its era.

With pop-up headlamps, a cylindrical dashboard, and two small windows carved out in to the front doors itself, the Alfa Romeo Caimano was like nothing people had ever seen before. Apparently, the windows in the doors were for air circulation. Even the windshield on the concept car was unique, as it stretched out to the center of the car in a dome shape, and even integrated the doors into it.

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The Lamborghini Terzo Millennio was born out a three-year-long partnership between the Italian supercar maker and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to Lamborghini, the Terzo Millennio is built on four pillars. These pillars, as the company states, are Energy, Innovation in Materials, Powertrain and Vehicle Architecture, and Sound and Emotion.

Built for the third millennium, this futuristic concept car was unveiled in 2017, and its sci-fi exterior is not the only thing conceptual or futuristic about it. The Terzo Millennio, while all-electric, doesn't run on batteries, but instead employs high-power super capacitors in four electric units. Furthermore, its unique carbon fiber body not only stores electricity, but even heals itself upon detecting cracks.

Conceptualized as an example of luxury and eco-technology coming together, the Jaguar Mark XXI was definitely weird-looking, to say the least. The design of the car resembled a leaf, in that the majority of its exterior actually had photovoltaic panels which looked like leaves themselves.

These panels were capable of automatically changing positions according to the sun's location, and would charge the car when stationary. Of course, being a Jaguar, the interior was plush with luxury, with laid back seats and ambient lighting. This was a concept design by designer Chris Pollard, which he showcased in 2009.

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Mazda revealed the Nagare (pronounced nah-gah-reh) in 2006, at the Los Angeles Auto Show. The concept car derived its name from the Japanese word for 'flow'. Designer and the brand's Global Design Director at the time, Laurens van den Acker stated that the Mazda Nagare was 'a celebration of proportions and surface language'.

The Nagare concept car's body lined were quite smooth, and definitely exemplified its namesake, moving like liquid across its unibody design. Massive, hefty wheels filled up the car's wheel wells, and the windshield moved all the way to the back, acting as a glass roof as well. The car even had gull wings, and housed Mazda's in-house hydrogen-fueled rotary engine.

The Mercedes-Benz F 015 was dubbed more of a research car rather than a concept car. This was revealed in 2015, and was capable of self-driving technology. Moreover, the car was also capable of ascertaining pedestrian presence, thanks to a high-density laser under the Silver Arrows badge.

The logo could even project symbols on the road. The car had a rather quirky yet endearing exterior, with two rear suicide doors and metallic windows. Elegant aluminum, leather, and timber made up the F 015's interior. The car was essentially a self-driving lounge with all the brand's intelligence and luxury, which has remained a pioneer in the industry.

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The Cadillac World Thorium Fuel has quite the apt name, since it can be shortened to Cadillac WTF. Revealed 13 years ago in 2009, Cadillac claimed that the concept car was actually nuclear-powered. If that wasn't ridiculous enough, the WTF was also capable of achieving a 100-year maintenance-free lifespan.

Thorium is a radioactive material which can otherwise be used as a nuclear fuel, and was the fuel behind the WTF. Each of the car's wheels were actually six separate mini-wheels which came with their own motors. This essentially meant that the World Thorium Fuel by Cadillac actually rode atop 24 wheels and 24 separate induction motors. Cadillac's current concepts, over a decade later, are quite the departure from the World Thorium Fuel.

The BMW Gina roadster was revealed in 2008, and was a shape-shifting concept car which changed its shape according to its surroundings and speeds. This conceptual Bimmer wore polyurethane-coated Spandex on its exterior, which was a tough, elastic, translucent, and impermeable skin.

The name Gina itself was an abbreviation, and stood for Geometry and functions In 'N' Adaptions. This sports car concept came from BMW's key design team, and this outlandish concept's interior apparatuses sat idle on the center console when the car wasn't in use. Even the steering wheel didn't come out of the center console until the car was started, which increased the ease of access into the car for occupants.

If it has wheels and an engine, Samarveer Singh is going to be obsessed with it. He is a budding Indian motorcycle racer, competing at the national level in his country in his very first year, chasing his dream around every corner of the racetrack. A touring enthusiast, Samarveer is forever stuck between the urge to constantly redline his bike, or save its clutch plates for longer.