By no means all automotive novelties that car manufacturers put in their cars today are actually new concepts. Electric cars are more than 100 years old, cars with a fuel cell on board were already there decades ago and navigation systems were also experimented decades ago. Mercedes-Benz will screen in 2021 with screens in the electric EQS, but 25 years ago the brand was clearly already thinking about dashboard-wide displays. We go back to 1996, the year Mercedes-Benz parked a triple preview on the show floor of the Mondial de l’automobile Paris.
The Paris Motor Show, which took place in 1996, was an edition that now makes us melancholy. Citroën looked ahead with three Berlingo Concepts on the car that would eventually be called Berlingo (photos 12 to 13); Fiat surprised friend and foe with the Multipla Concept (photo 15); Smart showed an early version of the City-Coupé (photo 16) and cars like the Toyota Picnic, Volvo C70 and third-generation Renault Espace made their public debut there. Mercedes-Benz presented the trade fair visitor with a threefold preview in the form of the F200 Imagination Concept.
Mercedes-Benz F200 Imagination Concept
The Mercedes-Benz F200 Imagination Concept was pure show of power. The show car served as a showcase for what Mercedes-Benz had to offer in terms of design and innovation. That turned out to be a lot. The sleek coupe, complete with butterfly doors that we would later see on the SLR McLaren, was packed with then-futuristic gadgets with which Mercedes-Benz wanted to display the muscle power of its R&D department. Before we go through those novelties and zoom in on the main item of this article, we can of course not leave the appearance of the F200 Imagination Concept untouched. For example, the front of the F200 Imagination Concept gave a taste of what you could expect from the S-class (W220) to be released two years later. That’s not all. You would see the silhouette of the F200 Imagination Concept on the CL-class (C215) that debuted in 1999.
Mercedes-Benz F200 Imagination Concept
Mercedes-Benz pulled out all the stops to make the F200 Imagination Concept an impressive reflection of its technical knowledge and skills. For example, the study model had cameras high in the A-pillars that functioned as side mirrors, Active Body Control, curtain airbags, an electrochromatic panoramic roof with adjustable transparency, a virtual interior mirror and an impressive dashboard strewn with screens. Indeed, with some fantasy the Hyperscreen from the 90s.
Mercedes-Benz F200 Imagination Concept
Hyperscreen in 1998
The Hyperscreen? Of course. For those who missed it: MBUX Hyperscreen is the name of the futuristic-looking displays that Mercedes-Benz offers as an option in the electric EQS. The MBUX Hyperscreen consists of a 1.41 meter wide piece of curved glass that actually covers the entire width of the dashboard. It contains two 12.3-inch displays and a centrally placed 17.7-inch measuring unit. So it is more than just the infotainment system, as the digital instrumentation is also included in the panel. The dashboard of the F200 Imagination, which is also covered with displays, was perhaps even more modern for its time than the MBUX Hyperscreen today. It consisted of a series of color monitors that not only displayed the speedometer and rev counter, but could also display the images taken by the A-pillar cameras that acted as side mirrors. In addition, information from the car telephone, the navigation system and the CD and DVD players was shown on the screens. Thanks to the connection to the World Wide Web, which is in its infancy compared to today’s Internet, you could even book a hotel and do your banking in the F200 Imagination Concept. Unlike the EQS with its Hyperscreen, the 25-year-old concept car still had an island with physical buttons, although even that unit looked futuristic.
Mercedes-Benz F200 Imagination Concept
Mercedes-Benz also filled its driving gadget with wireless headphones for the co-driver. More impressive was the steering. The F200 Imagination Concept did not have a regular steering wheel. Instead, the drive-by-wire-filled show car had joysticks in the door panels and in the center tunnel to literally guide the car in the right direction. In addition to steering, you could also accelerate and brake with those batons. Unfortunately, they never appeared in a production model, although Mercedes-Benz showed an SL-class (R129) with such joysticks in 1998 (photos 17 to 19). Even Mercedes-Benz didn’t always hit the mark.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl