{"id":12981,"date":"2020-10-23T13:22:41","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T03:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/?p=12981"},"modified":"2020-10-23T13:22:41","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T03:22:41","slug":"robert-opron-and-the-simca-fulgur-better-than-nostradamus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/weird-stuff\/robert-opron-and-the-simca-fulgur-better-than-nostradamus\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Opron and the Simca Fulgur: Better Than Nostradamus?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The question as to where all the flying cars are now that we\u2019re in 2020 has become a bit of a clich\u00e9. \u00a0It\u2019s been a bit of a clich\u00e9 ever since we hit the new millennium. This is a reference to the way that popular culture envisioned what family cars would look like in the 21<sup>st<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n<p>However, at least one car designer had ideas that were a bit more down to earth \u2013 literally.\u00a0 The year was 1958 and the designer was Robert Opron. This designer had accepted a challenge to produce a concept car for the 1959 Geneva Motor Show for his parent company Simca. Never heard of Simca? This was a French company owned by Fiat that rivalled Citroen for the title of \u201cFrance\u2019s answer to the VW Beetle\u201d. I owned one back in my student days \u2013 possibly a Simca 1300; it had a front engine like a normal car rather than a rear engine and it\u2019s probably worth a mint now, so I\u2019m rather regretting selling it. Its only quirk was a flaw in the speedo: after it hit 50 mph, the needle went back down even when I accelerated.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, enough memories of student cars and back to Robert Opron. \u00a0Opron later took his genius to Citro\u00ebn, then Renault, then Alfa Romeo. He has been recognised as one of the top 25 designers of the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century, although he wasn\u2019t the chap responsible for the very distinctive Citroen 2CV. The Renault Alpine was his, though, as were a number of 1980s Renaults.<\/p>\n<p>Opron had come across a challenge issued by the <em>Journal de Tintin<\/em>. \u00a0Yes, that\u2019s Tintin as in the intrepid red-haired reporter who has a dog called Snowy and a best friend called Captain Haddock.\u00a0 The challenge was to design a \u201ctypical\u201d car for the 1980s or for the year 2000. The challenge included a list of specifications that had to be included in the design, including the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>fuelled by a nuclear-powered battery or a hydrogen fuel cell with a range of 5000 km<\/li>\n<li>running on two wheels, balanced gyroscopically, at speeds over 150 km\/h,<\/li>\n<li>voice controlled<\/li>\n<li>radar guidance for navigation and for detecting hazards<\/li>\n<li>top speed of over 300 km\/h<\/li>\n<li>automatic braking if it detected a hazard<\/li>\n<li>headlights that adjust automatically with speed<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Although Opron didn\u2019t produce a full working prototype, he did show a shell of the concept at the 1959 motor show and the full details of the concept car, known as the Simca Fulgur, were published in the <em>Journal de Tintin<\/em> (this suggests that it would have appeared alongside <em>The Red Sea Sharks<\/em> and\/or <em>Tintin in Tibet<\/em> \u2013 just in case you were curious, like I was).<\/p>\n<p>The Simca Fulgur \u2013 which takes its name from the Latin word meaning \u201clightning\u201d \u2013 looked like the classic Jetsons flying car, except it didn\u2019t fly. It captured the public imagination somewhat and became the basis for what people thought futuristic cars would look like. Or what UFOs would look like \u2013 take your pick.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12982\" src=\"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/fulgar-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"840\" height=\"623\" \/>Anyway, from the perspective of late October in 2020, 61 years later, it\u2019s amusing to take a look at the cars of today and see how close we\u2019ve actually come to getting some of these features. How well did the Fulgur predict what we\u2019d have on our roads?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Voice control: Yes, we\u2019ve got this, although it\u2019s not quite a case of telling the car your destination and letting it get there (they\u2019re working on that). But you can use voice control on quite a few things, including the navigation system.<\/li>\n<li>Top speed of over 300 km\/h: Yes, but most cars that are capable of this have their speeds limited for safety purposes.<\/li>\n<li>Autonomous braking and hazard detection: Yes. However, human input is still needed.<\/li>\n<li>Automatically adjusting headlights: Yes, although they adjust for the ambient light levels rather than how fast you\u2019re going.<\/li>\n<li>Electric motor with hydrogen fuel cell technology: Yes, although the range isn\u2019t anywhere near what was predicted. We\u2019d all love a range of 5000 km in an EV (electric vehicle) or HFCV (hydrogen fuel cell vehicle).<\/li>\n<li>Electrical motor with nuclear power: Are you kidding me? Since Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear power isn\u2019t quite the sexy answer to our energy problems that it was back in the 1950s.<\/li>\n<li>Balancing on two wheels with gyroscopic stabilisers at speeds over 150 km\/h: No. Just no. If you want that sort of thing, get a motorbike, not a family saloon.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All in all, not too bad a job of predicting the future, Monsieur Opron \u2013 you did a better job than your compatriot Nostradamus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The question as to where all the flying cars are now that we\u2019re in 2020 has become a bit of a clich\u00e9. \u00a0It\u2019s been a bit of a clich\u00e9 ever since we hit the new millennium. This is a reference to the way that popular culture envisioned what family cars would look like in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5120,6633,86,4923,296,6216,56],"tags":[31,70,6675,6676,1085,634,6673,6674],"class_list":["post-12981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-automotive-design","category-autonomous-vehicles","category-blog","category-electric-vehicles-evs","category-history","category-hydrogen-vehicles","category-weird-stuff","tag-citroen","tag-concept-cars","tag-flying-cars","tag-futuristic-cars","tag-geneva-motor-show","tag-renault","tag-simca","tag-simca-fulgur"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12983,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12981\/revisions\/12983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}