BMW concept news - The future’s prickly - 2009

What comes after flame surfacing and layered surfacing? According to one Polish designer, the future of BMW design lies in, er, porcupine surfacing.

This is the Lovos concept from designer Anne Forschner, a proper vapourware view of how a BMW coupe might look in The Future... if it crossbred with a sharp-quilled rodent.

It might initially sound - and look - like a genuinely, monumentally daft idea. Which it probably is. But it's sort of clever at the same time: those fin-like body panels can either sit flush or raise up to act as air brakes. They're photovoltaic, too, turning sunlight into electricity to power the Lovos.

Oh, and every one of the 260 panels is identical, so they're easy to change if one gets snapped in, say, a territorial battle with an enraged hedgehog. No word on what would power the Lovos, but given the presence of all those solar panels, we're guessing it's probably electric. Or runs solely on the power of bad thoughts and confusion.

Will it ever get built? Er, no. But it's nice to see designers thinking outside the box, isn't it? Blue-sky thinking. Pushing the envelope. Squeezing the manatee. OK, we'll stop now...