Why do production model automobiles never look as good as the concept models?

You people at Generous Motors and Ford Motor Company have a bad habit of showing us your beautiful concept designs that everyone including myself drool over and then tell us that this is what a certain vehicle you will be building will look like but, LOW AND BEHOLD! When it comes out as the production model it looks not quite or nothing at all like the concept. WHY DOES THAT ALWAYS HAPPEN?(lets use one of the many examples: the Pontiac G6 for example… Only the front grill looks like the concept) Hey! You built that concept the way it looks there, so build about 300,000 more of those identically! What's wrong with that? I'm sick of being disappointed when the actual production model comes out… This happens every year! Chrysler has a better record of putting cars on the road as they looked as when they were concepts. Why can't GM and FORD do the same? Will someone please explain this strange phenomenon. I NEED TO KNOW!

The main reason for the lack of production of concept cars is simply money.

I work for a major auto manufactuer (no names) and have worked on several concept cars. A concept car 99% of the time is a HAND built car mostly constructed of fiberglass (sometimes carbon fiber and or sheetmetal) with a "doner" chassis from some other already in production car underneith it. Hand building a car is extremely labor intensive and expensive (say $850,000-1.5 million on average! ) When a design studio decides to try out a new design they will have several stages of design and conceptualization and only the luckiest designs get to see the light of day out side of the studio as a "concept car". When a car company requests a concept car to be built there's no requirements imposed upon it other than "it has to look like the sketch" Most of the concept cars that you see on stage at your local auto show have TONS of problems with them that the average onlooker will not see such as:

the seats don't move
the mirrors don't adjust
no functioning air (hot or cold) inside the cabin
the engine does not function or can only function for short periods due to overheating issues
the electrical system is held together with tape
the windshield wipers don't exist or are hot glued on
the head lights are just bright enough to "look like they're on"
the windows are plexiglass
none of the gauges (speed, etc…) work at all
the air bags are non-exsistant
the wheels are so big they rub like crazy and it would take a 1/4 mile to make a u-turn
etc…

this is not to mentioon the standards imposed upon every car on the road by the federal government such as

headlamp illumination pattern
bumper to sheet metal offsets
bumper heights
side impact beams
front and side impact crumple zones
driver and passenger visability requirements
etc…

Once a concept car has been to the show and every body LOVES it, it comes under the scrutiny of

the marketing team
(who says "we don't think it would sell 300,000 units a year")
the engineers
(who say "you could never make it like THAT!)
more and more designers
(who say " I don't really like what so-and-so did with that line")
and finally the consumer
(who says "I want it just like the concept!")

So you see there are many factors that come into play when a concept car is "accepted" and sleighted for production "potential"

And the bottom line is and always will be cost. If a manufacturer can't sell tons of them and make a good profit then it will die before it even gets off the show floor.

To answer your comment about Chrysler: The Germans (who own part of Chrysler) generally see concepts as a waste of money (which the often are) and only show a concept after it has gone through alot more feasablity tests. So the car that you see on stage has had alot more work into it and is more production ready than most other concept cars that you will see.

Hope this answers your questions.

The bean counters must be satisfied before upper management signs off on a design, and Ford and GM have a *lot* of bean counters.

Go look at a Honda. Their concepts are often unlovely, in my opinion anyway -- your mileage may vary -- but the production models will look very much like them.

MOST "concept" cars would be nearly impossible to mass produce, or would be so expensive that the average customer couldn't afford to buy them. Automobile designers create "dream cars" that set certain style points, and then they turn the concept over to the production engineers who have to actually BUILD and SELL the car. Sometimes the translation between dream and reality doesn't fare too well.