The big Stellantis electrification awakening took place today with a news dump of EV info for just about every brand under their corporate tent. A lot of it was predictable because the folks in Auburn Hills are a bit late to the game. But that’s OK. Still, Stellantis had to throw some red meat into the mix. A tease of an unidentified white Chrysler concept SUV/crossover was worked into the day’s festivities.
Let’s try and figure what the mystery Chrysler concept started as
So let’s figure out what it might be, shall we? We need to start with some givens and work our way quickly to an answer. First, none of the manufacturers do concepts like they used to. The full-on, scratch-built stuff ground to a halt in the early 2000s. Now, every concept starts out as something coming down the line.
The talented designers will fake you with futuristic front ends and rear fascias. There will be 30-inch tall wheels on hyper-low profile tires, and interiors so modern we won’t see them in our lifetimes. But the basic shells, platforms, and inner structures are pre-production something.
These days the EV concepts have to be zoomy but based in reality
The concepts are just disguised to give you a nudge toward the inevitable production version. It gives the companies something zoomy to show off. And it might leave its impression in your mind should you actually buy one in a couple of years.
Now, Stellantis was made up of a bunch of European companies that all have EVs in the works pre-Chrysler merger. And they are fairly far along in their development. We’re talking about Citroen, Peugeot, Opel, and so on.
Stellantis has too many choices for designers to start their Chrysler concepts with
So there is no way that the Chrysler arm of this combined venture will develop something from scratch. There are too many choices to start with that Americans know nothing about. So the goal is to pick one and then make it look like a concept. And then we have some fun and entertain what the concept started as.
In looking at what Stellantis was pre-Chrysler, we have a lot to choose from. So we have to look at proportions, wheelbases, beltlines, and profiles. And they have to have an electric platform, even if it is experimental and not exactly developed for production.
The one we think syncs up most to the mystery concept is a Citroen C5 X
Once you start eyeballing the choices, there is one that syncs up with the mystery white EV concept. To our eyes, the mystery Chrysler EV began as a Citroen C5 X. Sure, a lot of the details are different. And definitely the front and rear are nothing like the Citroen.
But that is all stuff you can clay up in the studio. Then they splash molds and screw them onto your base Citroen. They can peel off the production sheetmetal and dig in on the obfuscation.
Are we spitballing? Yeah, we are. We have no inside information. The Stellantis people would be crazy to let MotorBiscuit Biscuits into their design studios.
We hope you enjoyed this concept-identifying game
Still, it’s fun to speculate on 1) what it is, and 2) what it might have begun as. Because the days of ground-up, scratch-built concepts are unfortunately part of the past. The suits want to know that there is some semblance of reality and not some blue-sky nonsense.
If and when there are more “concepts” to decipher we’ll do another version of this exercise. But in the meantime, when a concept does pop up look for signs of its pre-production origins. It’s a fun game we like to play around here.
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