Nissan Detroit minivan concept news - Forum over function - 2008

Top Gear's award for Most Self-Important Car at Detroit goes to this: this Nissan Forum Concept. 

It is, we concede, a nifty little minivan concept with a host of neat touches. But Nissan's description of the Forum paints it as the solution to, well, everything. 

'The Forum offers a sophisticated space for adults and an engaging space for children, allowing both groups to enjoy themselves in their own individualistic ways while being connected in one vehicle,' starts a Nissan spokesman. He goes on to describe the Forum as - ready for this? - 'one unique family "togetherness" space'. 

How does the Forum achieve such lofty claims? Through, erm, revolving seats, mainly. The second row of seats can be rotated through 90- or 180-degrees, creating a little lounge-type area suitable for, one imagines, impromptu family psychoanalysis sessions. 

But the cod psychology hasn't finished there. 'With traditional minivans, both mums and dads sometimes feel like they are sitting in a kids' playroom - losing their identities in the vehicle,' continues the Nissan spokesman. 'Forum lets kids be kids, and grown-ups be grown-ups, with the adults firmly in charge.'

But how? Something ominously called the 'Time Out Button', which allows the driver to mute all in-car entertainment and be broadcast over all the speakers, presumably to yell something beginning with: 'If you do that one more bloody time...' We can't imagine that one going down well with the kids. 

There are, in fairness, some neat bits to the Forum. We like those trackless sliding rear doors - expected to appear on the next-gen Renault Espace - and B-pillarless design. 

But for a car without an engine (Nissan only says that a clean diesel would fit 'conceptually') it has a rather high opinion of its own ability, something our award will only make worse, we fear. Is that ironic?