Late November into early December is one of my favorite times of the year, but it’s not solely for the reasons you might think. Thanksgiving is only a few days away, the NFL is in full swing, and Christmas is right around the corner, but that’s no big deal. No denying that turkey is great and who doesn’t like getting shiny new car parts and tools from the fat guy in red, but there’s three other events that get me as excited as, well, as excited as a kid at Christmas: The LA Auto Show, the Tokyo Auto Show, and the Detroit Auto Show. To be more specific, it’s the wild and crazy concept cars that are often unveiled at these three shows that really gets my blood pumping.

You see, I absolutely love concept cars. Sure, the majority of the concepts on display are for rather pedestrian passenger vehicles and are often ninety percent production ready, but there’s guaranteed to be one or two that are absolutely bonkers; those are the cars that immediately grab my attention and leave me speechless, either because it’s the greatest thing I have ever seen, or because it’s so absurd that I can’t believe that a serious company will actually associate their brand reputation with it. In my opinion, the best concept cars will alternate between invoking both reactions while you take in all of the details and nuances.

Take the Mercedes AMG Vision Gran Turismo that was unveiled at the LA show, for example:

This car is…I can’t even think of the right adjectives to use to describe it properly. Let’s just say that if Batman were real, and New York/Gotham was stuck in some sort of retro-futuristic 1940s time warp, this would be the car that Bruce Wayne would drive. I understand that this is solely a 1:1 scale model of a car produced for a video game (Gran Turismo 6), and that the only functional parts are the lights and the adjustable spoiler, but I don’t care. I want to buy it and find a way to make it move under its own power. Hell, I’d even be happy just parking it in my driveway and walking outside to stare at it every day, it’s that stunning. Maybe I’d even hop in the front seat once in a while and make vroom vroom noises. Don’t judge; you don’t know me.

Sure, the wheels are ridiculously oversized and have what looks to be 10 series tires based on the millimeter-thick sidewall, there’s a complete lack of a rear window, and it has so little ground clearance that it would scrape on a perfectly flat road. All of that doesn’t matter, because it’s exactly the car that I wanted when I was ten years old, and that inner ten year old is currently calling me an old man for even worrying about such mundane things as needing to see what’s behind you. Just. Look. At. The. Damn. Car.

You see, that’s why I hate concept cars, because they show you just how stunning and beautiful a vehicle can be if designers were allowed to go hog wild without having to consider such necessary evils as budgets, drivetrain packaging, emissions, and safety regulations. If and when the car does make it into production, it’s always a compromise between the original design vision and all of the limitations just listed, with the design typically becoming a shadow of itself.

Let’s use the hot off the press 2015 Subaru Impreza WRX as a real-world example.

Back in 2013, Subaru was hinting at what the next-generation WRX would look like with this concept car:

The moment I saw photos of this car, I went into full-on “Shut up and take my money!” mode and started estimating what a monthly payment would be for the car when it was introduced in 2015. Yes, I recognized that the headlights would never see the light of day on a production model (Much like the fantastic one-piece rear tail light for the Challenger concept that was axed) and that the roof line was a bit low, but I thought that otherwise it would make it to production reasonably unscathed. I even believed the frameless doors might have a chance of survival, as most Subarus up until 2008 did not have full-framed doors.

Boy, was I in for a surprise as I watched the live unveiling of the 2015 WRX at the LA show and saw that they turned my beloved concept into what can best be described as a Toyota Corolla with a hood scoop.

Rather than subjecting you loyal readers to a rant about all that is wrong with this Subaru, I’ll leave you with these questions:

Are you looking forward to the unveiling of the 2015 Mustang in a few weeks, and what are your thoughts on Ford having kept it under relatively tight wraps compared to the Challenger and Camaro concepts that Chrysler and GM trotted out for what seemed like an eternity prior to the actual cars being made available for purchase?

With the Camaro in particular, I know that I personally was getting burned out from all of the exposure in 2006, and that was almost a full three years before the fifth-gen car was released for the 2009 model year.

While Ford did show us the Evos concept a while back, and from the leaked photos that I’ve seen it does bear a resemblance to the new Mustang, I don’t think that the car will suffer from the same backlash from enthusiasts as the WRX as the concept was never officially called out as being the new Mustang. Either way, I’m definitely excited to see what it will look like when unveiled in a few short days and the official drivetrain options are made available.

In the meantime, I’m going to go back to drooling over that AMG and hoping that it sees the light of day while remaining as ridiculous and impractical as it is, if only for the ten year old inside of me.