GUESS WHO'S BACK

Mercedes is looking to the future by pillaging its past... specifically its experimental C111 concept from 1969

- JASON BARLOW 

Disruptive start-ups have set the pace this past decade. Chinese brands few of us are currently familiar with are queuing up to do the same over the next five years. Ask yourself, does anyone still truly care about heritage?

Mercedes-Benz thinks so. "It's very much about icons. Icons make the difference between mainstream and luxury," the company's chief design officer Gorden Wagener tells TG. "Artists and designers always want to make a big statement in history, right? Whether or not a designer's work actually becomes iconic only becomes apparent with the passage of time, but icons define luxury. We love sports cars, we love Gullwings, we love low cars, and we love orange cars."

Enter the Vision One-Eleven, a concept car of such old school flamboyance it's worth checking you haven't fallen through a hole in the space-time continuum to 1969. Back then car designers - mostly Italian, it must be said jettisoned the curvy sensuality they'd become famous for in favour of radical proportions and wedge shaped silhouettes. Think Bertone's Alfa Romeo Carabo and Lancia Stratos Zero, Italdesign's Bizzarrini Manta, and Pininfarina's Ferrari Modulo. NASA had just put mankind on the moon. These looked like cars you could drive there.