Rinspeed's Transparent eXasis Concept

We just luuuuv Rinspeed – every year the Swiss engineering futurists produce one or more remarkable automotive ideas which we feature and they never fail to produce something stimulating and thought-provoking about the future of transportation. The 2007 installment is the fully transparent creation eXasis. The insect-like body and even the floor pan of the seemingly ''glass'' concept car actually consist of a transparent high-tech plastic with a tinge of pale yellow. The eXasis has open wheels, a cigar-shaped body with fore and aft tandem seating, and has elements of the legendary Auto Union race cars from the first half of the last century combined with a modern Baja-1000 off-road vehicle. The car will be shown for the first time at the Geneva Auto Show next March.

The transparency dematerializes the car to a large extent. Behind the seemingly fading matter the spirit of the ''eXasis'' reveals itself: The ideas, thoughts and imagination that were the basis of its development. For Rinspeed boss Frank M. Rinderknecht the ''eXasis'' symbolizes this development process, a process that takes immaterial spirit and turns it into matter, transforms a mere vision into a concrete car: ''And in all its transparency the ''eXasis'' still seems as if it hadn't arrived fully yet in the material world.''