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4 sci-fi film vehicles that are too good to be true

When movie directors want to give their vision of the future some added verisimilitude, they turn to real-life car manufacturers to create the vehicles of tomorrow. And we wish we could get our hands on them today

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Sci-fi films set in the near future aim to depict a world that’s recognisably ours – with a few futuristic touches.

And the best way to do that? Fill that future world with the brands of today. Sometimes that can be clunky (remember Will Smith’s Converse in I, Robot?), sometimes it can date the film badly (Pan-Am and Atari in Blade Runner, anyone?).

But when it comes to populating the roads of tomorrow, film-makers have put the pedal to the metal and hared off into the future at top speed. These vehicles may be the stuff of fantasy, but the companies that conjured them up are very real – and we hope that they’re working on making them a reality sooner rather than later.

Audi Fleet Shuttle Quattro – Ender’s Game

Audi Fleet Shuttle Quattro - Ender

Vorsprung durch Technik, or “Progress through technology,” is Audi’s philosophy – and boy, do they take it seriously.

The Audi Fleet Shuttle Quattro is Audi’s first attempt at creating a completely virtual car from mind to paper to screen, without ever leaving a single tyre mark on the streets – except for the fictional roads in Ender’s Game.

Evolving the design language seen in the Audi RSQ featured in I, Robot (see below), the Fleet Shuttle Quattro features understated green lighting, smoked glass and the mark of every futuristic car, gullwing doors. Although we’ve only seen glimpses of the Fleet Shuttle Quattro, we’re expecting it to pack some epic futuristic gadgetry under its hood – and hopefully some kit that future real-world models can emulate.

Bugatti – Elysium

Bugatti - Elysium

In Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, the lucky one percent got to live on an orbiting space habitat while the rest of humanity was left to slum it on Earth in a dystopian hellhole. Naturally, luxury brands like Armani and Versace figured heavily – but who cares about the fashion? It’s the flying Bugatti that everyone’s got their eyes on.

Blomkamp reached out to the luxury brands featured in the film – not for product placement, but to enhance the realism of the film’s future setting. After all, as he told the Wall Street Journal, “If you had a bunch of rich people living up there, they would have the equivalent of Ferraris and Bugattis that they fly around with. Basically, what I wanted to do was make a Bugatti that’s 150 years in the future, and those don’t come with wheels.”

[Image: Art of VFX]

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