Mercedes Benz Vario Research Car - Four In One #blogpost

One day, you’ve bought a Miata. You’re very happy that you got the “perfect car”. Yeah, after all, you’re single, and a Miata is enough to keep up your daily life.
Years passed, you have a family, and you wanted to upgrade but you want to keep the Miata. However, your family will not fit inside this teeny weeny car. You could choose to replace it with another one, but then you probably have a chance to get a lame, boring crossover with Bluetooth that don’t work. Or more realistically, you could choose to keep the Miata and get a new car for the family. But what if you can’t keep up the service costs, tax and insurance?

Don’t worry, in this market, there’s a lot of fun and cool cars that actually can carry people and loads. These cars are great, but then, if you don’t want to separate your beloved Miata, you’re ran out of luck.
But in the ‘90s, Mercedes Benz, the maker of the AMG Project One today, made a really ambitious thing the ultimate (bizarre) super-duper multi-purpose car: the VRC. Or known as the Vario Research Car.

Launched in the 1995 Geneva Motor Show, this car features a really unique idea: interchangable body. The car is actually 4 packed in one, it can be a wagon for the family, a coupe for (driving really slowly in) the racetrack, a convertible for the cruise or a wagon/ute for the workloads. Imagine getting 4 cars for a single price.

The bodies were weighted in a user friendly 30-55 kgs, that means you don’t need to be The Rock to carry those roofs. Fear of being killed inside in a crash? Mercedes claimed that the roofs have “a high level of stability and crashworthiness.”
Don’t want to do it yourself? Or you don’t have enough space or money? Okay, Mercedes Benz have made an idea of a rental station where the owner would go to pick up the desired body and keep it without any time restrictions to worry about. So that means you can take your car to there, tell the service technicians which roof you want, then the guys will help you to install it, all in a small fee.

The idea didn’t just limited into the ultra-versatile body. The car is also pretty advanced on it’s era. That time, CVT and CFRP bodies were unicorns and even today, both of them isn’t really that common in cars. Moreover, the VCR was actually Mercedes’ very first research car to benefit from drive-by-wire technology for the steering and brakes by eliminating the mechanical linkages.

The concept car also featured a traffic sign evaluating system, which can be best described as an early sign of today’s traffic sign detection. It was able to identify the speed limit in a certain area and then visually alert the driver whenever speeding. The cockpit in the car contains a colour display which shows the driver all the required information. Yeah. In 1995, this is witchcraft.

Sadly, before the world can get the “ultimate” car in their hands, Mercedes decided to call it a day and there’s no plans to sell it to the public. What a waste. This is the car that probably can nearly replace your trusty old Miata. It could be.
Anyway, it became forgotten after the show. And nobody did really made this concept became reality. Who cares, anyway?