Meet San Yuan Concept, Frankfurt’s No. 1 ‘all-over-the-place’ Frankencar

Aside from hosting much-awaited premieres from leading international car manufacturers, the Frankfurt Motor Show also provides some interesting insight into what the smaller companies are doing. To be able to see from a different perspective should be a good thing, but in the case of the San Yuan Concept… we’re not so sure.

Headquartered in Taipei, China, San Yuan Design has been around since 1984 and is mostly known for its cooperation with Yamaha. The company designs drafts and prototypes of cars for other brands. Among other things, it sketched up the 2005 Ford Equator, the 2009 Suzuki SX4 body kit, and the Neora Concept for its fellow Chinese car marque, Luxgen. The San Yuan Concept depicted here is its first independent project.

How should we describe it? To say that it looks weird would be putting it mildly. The proportions seem way off, and the individual design elements seem borrowed from all kinds of other cars, then slapped together in a way that would never work. The cabin boasts two Mercedes-like displays on the dashboard, but the instrument cluster itself leans strongly into the 1950s-era U.S. concept car territory. Whatever…

There are no tech specs available, and the popular opinion is that the mock-up doesn’t even have a drivetrain beneath all that hodgepodge.