Back to the Future day: meet five of 1985’s finest concept cars

Top Gear is sorely disappointed. Today, as every nearby hipster will be repeatedly reminding you, is Back to the Future day.

And though companies are working tirelessly to build actual, real-life hoverboards and flying cars, both remain still sadly distant. As does the prospect of JAWS 19, and indeed self-drying clothes.

Still, we live in hope. However, while Back to the Future II offered a vision of 2015, how did the car world of the Eighties imagine the future would pan out?

To answer that time-travelling query, we've rounded up six glorious concept cars from 1985 – the year BTTF II travels from – to see how car companies imagined the future would pan out…

Pretty much exactly how you imagined a concept car from the mid 1980s would look, no? The Wildcat featured a glass canopy roof that tilted forwards to allow the driver easier ingress, a video screen (!), a spoke-free steering wheel and, um, a McLaren-sourced 3.8-litre V6.

360 horsepowers were on offer, sending power to all four wheels, although the Wildcat was apparently limited to 70mph. Not fast enough for time travel, as we all know.

What we got instead: the, um, 1985 Buick Somerset.

A four-wheel-drive, mid-engined Nissan supercar designed to go toe-to-toe with European supercars? Step forward the MID4. Unveiled at the 1985 Frankfurt Motor Show, it featured a 3.0-litre V6, and the first instance of Nissan’s ‘HICAS’ rear-wheel steering system. Sadly, it was never to be.

Nor were Nissan’s other 1985 concepts, the Cue-X and AZ-1.

What we got instead: Nissan’s actually rather lovely range of SX models.

This slice of 80s goodness now sits at the Heritage Motor Centre in Gaydon, complete with a 250bhp 3.0-litre V6 mounted in the middle. Those looks would never see the light of a production line, however.

What we got instead: the, um, MG Montego. 

A four-seat, four-wheel-drive, four-wheel-steer Japanese coupe with 320bhp, you say? You’ll be after the MX-03 concept, complete with a 0-60mph time of five seconds, top speed of 186mph and that ludicrously Eighties aircraft-inspired interior.

What we got instead: the second-generation Mazda RX-7. Not a bad trade-off.

Not, as the name might suggest, an electric car, but rather an ‘Experimental Vehicle’. The EV-1 represented the future that Saab envisioned for us all, and what a glorious future it would have been too.

Unveiled at the 1985 Frankfurt show, the EV-1 was constructed of Kevlar and glass-fibre, and featured heat-resistant glass with solar cells embedded inside. Underneath it was all 900 Turbo: a 2.0-litre turbocharged four-pot with 282bhp powered the front wheels.

What we got instead: a wonder of 60s, 600s, 900s and 9000s.