The Volvo XC60 is compact crossover at its finest.

This oeuvre-on-wheels may be sharing a niche currently dominated by impressive entries from big guns like BMW (BMW X3), Land Rover (Land Rover LR2), Acura (Acura RDX), and Infiniti (EX35), but, being a flagship product of the Swedish company’s thrust to enhance the design DNA of its cars and being billed as the “safest Volvo ever,” it can surely outshine its earlier counterparts.

According to Volvo, the car is packed with “more emotive form and more energy” compared to all the other cars it has manufactured through the years. Volvo Cars Design Director Steve Mattin further claimed that “if you say that you’d recognize a Volvo from a hundred meters away today, I dare say the XC60 radiates a clear Volvo presence from at least twice that distance.”

But there is something more interesting than the luster—the XC60 is available in metallic finishes: electric silver, black sapphire, barents blue, maple red, to name some—catching the eyes of people from this “double-distance” Mattin is talking about. The XC60 is offered with drivers having a say on what engine will run their XC60s: it can either be the turbocharged T6, which produces 285 horsepower, or two variants of the D5 turbodiesel—for Europe—yielding 185 and 163 horsepower respectively. All Wheel Drive (AWD) is fitted as standard.

The XC60 also features a revolutionary braking technology called “City Safety,” which enables the car to automatically brake whenever the car is about to drive into something—a wall, another car—and the driver is not able to respond. This is done via built-in cameras and sensors that can detect imminent impacts.

“We are the first manufacturer in the world to offer this type of feature as standard. City Safety clearly advertises that the new XC60 is the safest car Volvo has ever produced,” Volvo CEO Fredrik Arp said. “The car is packed with our accumulated safety know-how and technology, both when it comes to preventing accidents and protecting all the occupants in a collision.”

Aside from these special attributes, the XC60 does not leave out other staples of a dream comfort car. It has standard Bluetooth connectivity, HD Radio, Sirius Satellite Radio, USB and auxiliary inputs for audio players, power front seats, roof rails, and even a large moonroof.

For customization whiz Beau Boeckmann, the trick isn’t about setting one’s vision faraway in the future nor is it about whipping up creations based on popular, up-to-date inspirations. Actually, for him, it’s exactly the opposite: going back to the roots and creating a niche in grounds airier and less explored.

Scythe, a customized GT Convertible 2008 Ford Mustang from the Galpin Auto Sports (GAS), gives us a peek on things to come for car customization. “With Scythe, we set out to showcase all of our unique fabrication abilities,” GAS President Beau Boeckmann said.

And this twist—which entails eponymously changing the spelling of a term that once revolutionized the autosphere and tinkering with motorist eye-candies like the 2008 GT Convertible Ford Mustang—paid off, particularly substantiated when Galpin Auto Sports, Boeckmann’s California-based shop, gained prominence courtesy of two seasons worth of exposure in MTV’s Pimp My Ride.

One of Boeckmann’s more famous creations is a tricked-out GT Convertible Mustang dubbed as Scythe. With its edgy structure and sleek finish, this 1960s-inspired purple wonder-on-wheels, which he considers a Kustom Kar, not a custom car, shockingly resembles the Batmobile. It serves as a solid testimony to Boeckmann’s brilliant penchant for finding inspiration in the likes of George Barris, designer of Bruce Wayne’s most famous vehicle, rather than those road-ragers featured in movies billed under the banner of The Fast and the Furious.

The “Galpinized” GT Convertible Mustang may not look as if it’s a Mustang since, as a blogger puts it, Boeckmann’s team “went completely nuts on it.” It boasts of a hand-made composite body, voice control (a talking onboard computer), and, props to drive-by-wire technology, dual retractable steering wheels. Scythe is powered by a twin-supercharged 1,005 horsepower engine.

The super-enhanced 2008 Ford Mustang GT Convertible is just one of Boeckmann’s many Kustom Kars. With a genius like him continuously shaping the face of Kustom Kulture, auto aficionados and the rest of the industry are given a treat to an avant-garde presentation of cars that isn’t just a result of an urge to be pompous and loud but is also deeply rooted on a principle that should always be considered when customizing a car: functionality.

It may appear like a second-rate car, yes, insipid white finish and all, coupled with 18-inch Anthracite alloy wheels and carbon fiber radiator grille and front panel that fail to impress at first glance. But wait till you see the interior. Which is what practically gained this Hyundai, the special edition Hyundai i30 Sport, a spot in this blog’s roster of auto revolutionaries.

So what is up with that? Leather black highlighted by patches of luminescent blue which one may ordinarily encounter backlighting cheap MP3 players. There, I just gave you some hints. Leather the seats, the steering wheel (with audio controls), and the shift knob but are beyond the ordinary as they are heated; minty toothpaste blue the color of the lights not of tin can-sounding music tanks but of an audio system to blow your mind—with USB and AUX ports and six speakers. Add some cruise control and automatic climate control and we’re sealing the deal with this car.

Or, wait, is it Hyundai sealing the deal for us as they are producing only 200 units of these?

So we already had a preview of sorts of how cars will look like if modeled after bats. Now how about patterning a four-wheeler after a, um, fish? Crazy thought, huh? But then the people in Mercedes managed to make the idea swim rather than sink.

For the record, the Mercedes-Benz Bionic Car is inspired by a boxfish. Thanks to the animal’s boxy frame, this Benz enjoys increased strength and stability (but, like the boxfish, is also lightweight). Also, and more importantly, it has enhanced aerodynamics and can achieve speeds of up to 118 miles an hour! Meanwhile, in terms of fuel economy, it boasts of a 70-miles-a-gallon rate.

To top everything else, the Mercedes-Benz Bionic Car is a car friendly to the environment as it decreases its emissions by up to 80%.

Let us first get the obvious done and over with: it is not a hearse. Wait! With the “Phantom” tag on it and the all-black finish, perhaps this car is a hearse—but no, it is not.

Rolling all the way from the late 1930s, the Phantom Corsair is actually a coupe that can seat up to six passengers. It was developed by Rust Heinz, a member of the H. J. Heinz family, and Maurice Schwartz of the Bohman & Schwartz coachbuilding company. Doing away with the ordinary car features (this wicked hunchback has no fenders, running boards, or door handles), it can be considered a metal (literally!) middle finger to all the norm-abiding cars during its time. With its steal-aluminum body and eight-cylinder engine, even Ozzy Osbourne, the proclaimed Prince of Darkness of Heavy Metal, will be haunted by this phantom in his highway-to-hell nightmares. Just. That. Sinister.

Yes, yes, yes, that is not the glare of your PC screen nor is it one of the uncanny effects of Photoshop. Those wrinkles on the door of the BMW GINA Light Visionary Model (GINA stands for Geometry and Functions in ‘N’ Adaptations—go figure) are for real!

That is basically why we have this car on our list: is it not one helluva concept to wrap a car, which can shape-shift with the help of electro-hydraulic actuators, with something close to human skin (which, in fact, is polyurethane-coated Lycra)? And, as far as humanizing goes, this BMW also has headlights that wink. Now if you think a car winking at you as it passes by is not weird, then, modesty aside, perhaps you are the one who is.

It was all in his head, the salvation of mankind. And the aspiration was rather overwhelming that he decided not to build a giant synagogue at the center of the world that shall be equipped with monster sound system (for preaching and praise songs). Instead, he went small-scale: he made a car. After all, I’m a car buff too, Catholic priest Father Alfred A. Juliano might have said.

Yes, the Aurora Safety Car, which is considered the first Experimental Safety Vehicle, is the brainchild of a priest! It was meant to go places–be a car with either a Cadillac, Lincoln, or Chrysler engine built on Buick chassis–but then the Aurora Motor Company, partly funded by Juliano’s congregation, went broke after coming up with the car’s first prototype, which cost $30, 000.00. Talk about one-hit wonders.

If there’s one feat we can accredit to this car (definitely not the design—what, are we seeing a plastic-covered bathtub on wheels?), it’s its attempt at a safer cruise on the highway. To that we say, amen.

So the picture of it making a sharp turn, in all its awkwardness (don’t mind the moustached driver, though), makes one wonder if the Mercedes F300 LifeJet is something to be taken seriously. Let’s answer that in the same plane where the question begs to be addressed: since this 1997 produce of Mercedes can lean into a corner at an angle up to 30 degrees, we can say that, yes, this innovation is something worthwhile. Perhaps, a little too superficial for an answer, you say (but, hey, that’s tilting technology at its finest!). OK, let me tell you that it runs on three wheels, has two seats, boasts of a “jet”-styled body, and is of lightweight construction. Not convinced still? C’mon! You just got to, at least, love the revolutionary idea of city-cruising in a spaceship, right?

Here, indulge yourself more.

At the onset, one can commend the cars for being true to their moniker as they, especially since they have those teeny red dots on the front end (lights or eyes, you tell me), appear to be bats, only with wings retracted. But, despite basking in the glory of being sleek blueprints for future Batmobiles, these cars, a collaborative effort of Bertone and Alfa Romeo, are not tagged as such just to show what those nocturnal flyers will look like once translated to vehicles, but simply to represent Alfa Romeo’s then thrust called the “Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica” (BAT), which aimed to create cars with the lowest possible drag coefficient.

The Bertone Alfa Romeo BAT 5,6, and 7, which were all presented at the Turin Auto Show (although in different years), impressively attained their goal and, too, classily represented aerodynamics, which then led to the achievement of wind resistance better than most of today’s so-called streamlined cars. The BATs, by the way, are also considered speed demons as they can survive the 125mph-mark.

In 2008, a similar BAT model came out. Dubbed BAT 11, this green-skinned BAT made its first appearance in the Geneva Auto Show.

Meanwhile, the three original BATs are now exhibited at the Blackhawk Museum in Danville, CA.

Perhaps in the 1950s (1958, to be exact), there came an announcement across the world that there would be an intercontinental science fair, which is bound to surpass the breakthrough of the atomic bomb, and perhaps, upon hearing the news, the people in Ford sat a day—or days—through then came up with, pardon the pun, an explosive idea: why on all the continents of the world don’t we put the same bastardizing power of the A-bomb in our car to replace the internal combustion in the engine? And then someone eager as a beaver yapped, “Yeah, let’s put it in the trunk.” “Or on it,” another quipped.

Thus, the Ford Nucleon was born.

This futuristic ensemble, which features a plutonium-powered “engine,” came from the ‘50s idea that someday, all things shall be powered by nuclear power. Guess that seemingly axiomatic supposition didn’t get too far, huh? And so did this car, which was never built and never produced. Who cares? This supercharged madness could have won a Nobel Prize. And, man, see how those tailfins extend? Wicked.