10 Concept Trucks That Were Too Weird To Live

In the late ‘90s and early 2000s, automakers went wild with concept trucks and SUVs that tried to capitalize on the growing market for big daily drivers and off-road machines. Not all of these were successful, and some ended up total dead ends, but many were gloriously weird and wonderful to look at, especially when wondering what might have been.

Here are 10 of the most intriguing concept trucks and concept sport-utility vehicles that just couldn’t cross the strangeness gap between auto show fantasy and showroom-ready reality.

1990 Ford Explorer Surf

The popularity of the Ford Explorer changed the automotive world forever, triggering the avalanche of SUVs that currently dominate the market, but when it debuted in 1990, executives at the automaker had no way of knowing that. Instead, they decided to buttress the standard two-door and four-door Explorer offering with a bunch of oddball concept editions to help drive interest towards the model.

Of these, one of the most memorable was the Ford Explorer Surf. Immediately eye-catching thanks to its ultra-90s pinkish-purple paint and cresting wave graphics, the Surf hedged the company’s bets by adopting the open-air fun of cute-utes like the Suzuki Samurai and the Geo Tracker. Of course, its much larger dimensions gave it a little more aggression than those pint-size roughnecks, and its targa top and completely absent rear roof spoke more to its beachcombing personality than it did to any production possibility.

What’s most interesting about the Explorer Surf was that it was a complete dead end. Ford never produced a true off-road edition of the Explorer in that decade that would have been worthy of its balloon tires, nor did it ever consider grafting the soon-to-depart Bronco’s convertible top onto the existing Explorer model.

1995 BMW Z18 Concept

Speaking of two-door SUV roadsters, BMW built exactly that at roughly the same time as the Ford Explorer Surf was making the rounds. The difference? The German brand kept the model a secret until the middle of the decade, when it revealed the very unusual Z18 Concept to the world.

You’re not imagining the family resemblance: the Z18 can trace a direct lineage to the BMW Z3 sports car, which arrived in 1995 right around when the company transitioned the Z18 from internal concept to external showcase. The grille and hood are an almost identical match, while the rest of the vehicle features a waterproof fibreglass body that sits on a full frame with respectable ground clearance.

The Z18 was never intended for production, no matter how much fun its 4.4-litre V8 engine might have been when blasting across those same beaches patrolled by the Explorer Surf. That being said, with the cute-ute market exploding during that decade, BMW may have missed the boat on easy profits with a wild two-door Ultimate Tanning Machine of its own that neither Mercedes-Benz nor Porsche would have been able to counter.

1997 Dodge Ram T-Rex

1997 was a banner year for weird truck concepts at Dodge. The most enduring of the pair of oddities it dropped at the end of the decade was the Ram T-Rex concept, a vehicle that took the standard full-size Ram heavy-duty pickup and added a third drive axle. That’s it. That’s the concept.

Oh, there’s a light bar in the mix, too, a winch, and a brush guard, but really the special sauce here was six-wheel-drive Ram. Throw in the fact that the T-Rex also came with the brand’s vaunted V10 engine, and this factory freak was enough to get the Mopar faithful in a lather.

This was more than a decade before Mercedes-Benz considered building a 6x6 edition of the G-Wagen, and the idea of a major automaker even floating the idea of putting a monster like this one in showrooms was absolutely sensational. Despite being fully functional, including an external transfer case for the rear axles, the T-Rex went extinct after doing the rounds of the show car circuit, likely a victim of Chrysler’s “merger of equals” with Daimler-Benz the following year.

1997 Dodge Dakota Sidewinder

The Dodge Dakota Sidewinder that also appeared in 1997 as a concept truck might have seemed even more out there than the T-Rex, but it potentially had a clearer path to market than its larger sibling. That’s how out-there Chrysler design was in that era, particularly when it came to pushing concepts almost directly into showrooms.

At first glance, there was very little of the Dakota in the Sidewinder other than its front grille (which matched the look of the recently released second-generation mid-size pickup). The rest of the vehicle’s sheet metal adopted a retro-futuristic feel, particularly the upsweep of its cab where it met the cargo bed, and, of course, in the fact that it was a convertible with a lift-off top. Under the hood sat the Viper’s familiar all-aluminum 10-cylinders, in a configuration considerably more powerful than what motivated the iron block T-Rex.

Park the Sidewinder beside the Plymouth Prowler of the same period, and there are far more styling similarities than differences. It’s also worth noting that this would have given Dodge a second outlet for its Viper drivetrain, potentially providing economies of scale for the limited production sports car’s engine. It’s not inconceivable that the Sidewinder might have found its way into customer garages had the same merger that doomed the T-Rex not happened within 12 months of its appearance at auto shows. The Viper V10 would have to wait several more years before pulling duty in a pickup when the Ram SRT-10 bowed in the mid-2000s.

2000 GMC Terradyne

GMC had never before produced a concept vehicle until the Terradyne was unveiled at the 2000 Detroit Auto Show. This angular goliath split the difference between off-road (big, empty wheel wells, knobby tires, huge ground clearance) and job site (enormous cab, laptop-equipped centre console, Quadrasteer four-wheel steering for the trailering set).

The craziest aspect of the Terradyne (once you got past all those trapezoids) was its sliding doors. Whereas every other concept truck was installing a set of coach doors, GMC went with van doors front and rear, sliding along tracks to provide unfettered access to its B-pillar-less interior. Combined with a taller roof, this dramatically increased the sense of space inside the pickup.

Beyond its basic shape, the Terradyne didn’t contribute all that much to GMC’s styling language over the course of the next decade. The Quadrasteer system, however, went on sale the following year—and more importantly, its Duramax turbodiesel engine soon became a mainstay among the brand’s commercial customers.

2001 Nissan Alpha T

When Nissan decided whether it should get serious about building a full-size pickup, it put as many ideas as it could into a concept called the Alpha T. This squared-off, chunky truck previewed a few aspects of the eventual production Nissan Titan (its grille and rear-hinged doors), but much of the rest was pure science fiction.

The Nissan Alpha T offered a slide-out cargo bed and a tailgate that dropped to the ground to serve as a lift for heavier cargo. It also came with massive fender cutouts that presumably allowed for extensive suspension travel. The T looked like nothing else on in production at the time, but the slope of its front end, its unusual fenders, and its second set of rear-hinged doors was in keeping with several other concepts of the same era (like the Terradyne, for example).

Under the hood, the vehicle’s 4.5-litre V8 was an aluminum marvel unlike anything else Nissan had brought to North America before, and previewed the 5.6-litre unit installed in several future SUVs as well as the Titan when it arrived two years later.

2002 Ford Mighty Tonka F-350

Ford was on the verge of changing its Super Duty truck styling as it moved into the 2000s, and what better way to illustrate how serious it was about commercial pickups than by partnering with one of the toy world’s biggest names?

The Mighty Tonka F-350 was a collaborative effort between Dearborn and Hasbro, and it primarily existed to normalize the grille that Ford planned to spread through its commercial truck lineup. That didn’t stop designers from adding touches like coach doors, enormous side pipes, and massive inboard-dually rear wheels, all finished in a shade of yellow typically seen on a school bus.

Seen today, the 22-inch rollers on the Tonka aren’t all that crazy, but at the time, they represented a true commitment to excess, as did everything else about the over-the-top character of the modified F-350. This concept truck got its point across and spread several of its design cues throughout the Ford Super Duty lineup, but judged against the behemoth pickups currently available from nearly every automaker, it’s hard not to see a missed opportunity here in terms of marketing to the lifestyle crowd. Maybe we just weren’t ready to super-size yet.

2002 Dodge M80

From the brand that brought you big rig styling with the Ram redesign a decade earlier comes a pint-sized pickup that apes the old-school pickups from Dodge’s pre-Second World War past.

There’s no doubt that the M80 is heavily influenced by the same retro vibes that had pushed the previously mentioned Prowler, as well as the PT Cruiser, to market. Behind its oversized wheels and gigantic fender flares, however, the Dodge concept was focused on minimalism and affordability, with the utility of its single-cab design improved by small complications like a primitive glass mid-gate that extended the cargo bed. Power came from the automaker’s ubiquitous 3.7-litre V6, and much of the interior styling was similar to the workaday, hard-wearing plastics found in the same-era Jeep Wrangler.

Dodge has never offered a true compact pickup in the U.S. or Canada, and the M80 wasn’t destined to break that streak. What it did do, however, is preview the looks of the upcoming Dodge Nitro SUV, a profitable, if more rectilinear take on the M80’s classic design.

2005 Ford SYNus

In 2005, Ford decided that what the world was really missing was an SUV in the exact shape of a Brinks truck. Enter the SYNus, a silver-hued hunk of metal that looks like it’s about to drive straight into your house and out through the other side. That tough image endures despite the vehicle being roughly the size of a compact hatchback.

Ford referred to the SYNus as an “urban sanctuary” (hence those last two letters in its name), but it’s hard to understand what would be relaxing about spending time inside a vehicle whose minuscule greenhouse is buttressed with bulletproof glass and features a “lockdown mode.”

Powered by a diesel engine and equipped with an internal wireless router at a time when that was considered the high point of in-vehicle connectivity, the SYNus felt like a leftover prop from an unmade Robocop movie. Nothing about this grim look at the future made it into upcoming Ford products, nor did it prove to be prescient about what we’d need to deal with our own current slide towards dystopia.

2008 Toyota A-BAT

The 2008 Toyota A-BAT concept is one of the truck world’s greatest “what might have been” wonders. Introduced at a time when the idea of a small, unibody pickup was pure fantasy, the A-BAT predicted both the Ford Maverick and the Hyundai Santa Cruz that appeared roughly a dozen years later to colonize the compact segment of the market.

The A-BAT looked like the future, but it was very practical, with a mid-gate “trunk” that slid out from under the cargo bed, and a fuel-efficient hybrid drivetrain. Nearly everything about this pickup was game-changing at a time when the clunky Ford Ranger was the smallest rig available. Even today, it feels like it could be competitive.

Instead, Toyota shelved the A-BAT and concentrated on the cash cow that was the Tacoma, the mid-size truck that outlived all rivals and continues to churn out big profits for the automaker. Still, it’s hard to understand why Toyota doesn’t return to the A-BAT’s roots as an electrified, practical-minded entry-level hauler and soak up at least a little of the Maverick money floating around out there.