The car industry has introduced all manner of technological and engineering innovations in the last 140 years, but they all have to start somewhere. Some ideas work straight out of the box, while some need refining before they hit the mainstream.
Here, we’ve looked at nine classics that can justifiably be described as ahead of their time, whether it’s their construction, features, genre, styling or a combination of several different elements that made them stand out. Some of these early adopters proved to be more successful than others, but all of them made an impact…
AUDI A2 (1995-2005)
Given that it still looks fresh today, it’s hard to believe that it’s almost 25 years since the Audi A2 was introduced, promising to give the small car tree a damn good shake. When Audi showed an aluminium-bodied supermini concept in 1997, few thought it would make production. Yet the A2 appeared only two years later. It was designed to be a small Audi, but not a cheap one – here was a premium supermini some two years before BMW’s MINI arrived.
But there was more to it than a premium feel. Like so many great cars, it stemmed from an ambitious and specific design brief, in this case to create a car that could carry four people between Stuttgart and Milan on a single tank of petrol. Audi’s Aluminium Space Frame (ASF), originally used for the A8, was downsized for the purposes of a volume-produced supermini. Laser-welded aluminium and aluminium alloy pressings, die-cast nodes and extrusions made up the bodyshell of the newcomer, with the self-supporting panels attached in a similar manner to the Rover P6 or Renault Espace.
The A2 had no front grille and no bonnet (just a bolt-down engine cover) all in the name of reducing drag and the fake ‘grille’ was, famously, a flip-down lid to reveal the fluid