BMW GINA Light Visionary Model, Cobalt Blue

The question the GINA put to BMW's designers was less about what the next BMW should look like than about what a car should be made of. Sheet metal fixes a shape the moment it is pressed; fabric over a movable frame need not. If the skin could stretch, the car could adapt, opening its kidney grille for extra cooling, raising a spoiler at speed, reshaping a rocker panel to improve airflow, and anything not in use could vanish beneath an almost unbroken surface. Developed under Chris Bangle and revealed in June 2008, the GINA was a research car, built to test those ideas rather than to reach a showroom.

Cobalt blue metallic, a vivid, mid-bright blue with a strong flake, gives this example a confident, sporting look against a white and light grey interior. The white-rimmed steering wheel, the stacked round dials and the grey console are clearly picked out, and the divided windscreen and stalk-mounted mirrors are neatly formed. Open headlamps, kidney grilles, split-spoke wheels with BMW centre caps and paired tailpipes in a carbon-weave diffuser complete the detail. The plaque on its stitched grey base marks it as one of 7. Built at 1:18.