It looked as though it had crash-landed from outer space, but then the International Automotive Design Venus was apparently inspired by science fiction. IAD’s design director, Alan Jackson told Autocar in April 1990: ‘I can imagine a Stephen King movie and a small American town closing down for the night. A guy comes home in his Venus and puts it in the garage for the night. Then he goes to bed. In the silence of the garage echo all the creaks and noises that a car makes when it cools down. Then I can imagine Venus coming to life. It’s a creature, this car, and it goes out into the town, then returns to the garage before daybreak.’
Quite. It’s hard to believe that beneath the car’s sci-fi exterior lay the foundations of a Lotus Esprit, engine, steering, suspension and all. The team that produced it, designer Michael Ani (pronounced Arni), design engineer Charles Nurse and lead clay modeller Steve Manko, created the initial 1:1-scale mock-up in time for the November 1989 Tokyo motor show. Theirs had been a simple-sounding brief: to create a sports car of the future. And by future, we mean 40 or 50 years down the line. Having rejected other ideas, not least a ‘four-wheel motorcycle’ (a sort of freakishly modern Lotus Seven) and a four-seater Paris-Dakar-type off-roader-cum-super coupé, they came up with this.
The first ‘runner’ was complete in time for the 1990 Turin Motor Show rolled around, just three months after the big reveal in Japan. Basis was an Esprit which was left largely unmodified save for the front box-section crossmember which was modified to ensure the body dovetailed into it. The glassfibre body featured scissor doors and shrouds that covered all four wheels, while each flank bulged outwards like a bloated insect. The A-pillars were shaped like ‘…mandibles of a giant ant.’ Inside, it was no less out there, even if the analogue instruments appeared a little low-tech, the steering wheel and pedals being telescopically adjustable.
Not only that, a large switch purportedly activated a clutch-less gear-change system similar to the Valeo set-up found on the works Lancia Delta rally cars. Obviously, it didn’t – this was a concept car, after all, but it did foretell the sort of fingertip gear-change arrangements we are so accustomed to nowadays. The Venus was 4000.5mm long and 1950.7mm wide, while the front and rear track were both 1679mm. Lotus apparently contributed the rolling chassis, complete with a normally-aspirated 2.2-litre, 16-valve four-cylinder unit, but its involvement was otherwise minimal.
As for the whether the Venus succeeded in its mission, it racked up plenty of column inches in period, and not just in the specialist press. For IAD, that was all that mattered. For obvious reasons, there was never any talk of the Venus entering even limited production. ‘I would be kidding you if I were to say it might,’ Jackson admitted. ‘It’s simply a concept designed to show what we can do here.’ Worthing-based IAD employed 1300 people at the time, and its turnover in 1989 was an impressive £47m. The once highly-respected consultancy was even bestowed with a Queen’s Award for Export and Industry around this time.
IAD worked for several major automotive brands, albeit for the most below the radar (much of the first-series Mazda MX-5, for example, was penned in West Sussex). Unfortunately, IAD hit the buffers during the early ’90s recession and was ‘saved’ by Mayflower Corp, which in turn sold its assets to Daewoo. As to what happened to the Venus subsequently, your guess is as good as ours. A dusty border town somewhere in the USA after dark is perhaps as good a place to look as any.
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