It’s about 90 degrees and, for car connoisseurs baking under the Southern California sun, it’s worth every drop of sweat. While the Art Center Car Classic ’07 is a much smaller event than the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, it draws one-off cars with enough design chutzpah and aerodynamic bravado to leave a seasoned car collector gasping for air.

"A lot of times you go to car shows and it is 300 ’57 Chevys," says comedian Jay Leno, who parked his SLR McLaren among the other invited cars at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. "There aren’t as many cars as you’d see at other shows, but they get ones you wouldn’t see anywhere else."

Rare doesn’t quite describe the show cars: Many are the sole model in existence. They fit together nicely on the Art Center’s sculpture garden, which for one day is a car-designer cornucopia. "It is the incredible blend between art and science," says Stewart Reed, chairman of the transportation design department.

This year’s exhibition included the famed Alfa Romeo triplets—the 1953, ’54 and ’55 Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica (BAT) cars owned by Blackhawk Collection of Danville, Calif. In charcoal, silver and aqua, the set is roughly valued at $25 million.

From the movie Solar Crisis, Gene Winfield’s Strip Star car—a ’63 Ford 427 cu in engine with dual quad carbs, packed onto a modified ’46 Ford chassis—was also on display.

As was the 2002 Lexus Concept, built by Art Center alum Harald Belker for the movie The Island, and the 1955 Ghia Streamline X "Gilda," designed for Chrysler by Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Ghia. If the Alfa BAT cars look like prototypes from The Jetsons, then the Gilda, with its low-slung body, long tapered fins and saucer shape, looks like something that flew in from outer space.

"This is the one car show we come to by choice—it’s by designers, for designers. Everything here is unique," says Reeves Callaway, who parked his 2007 Callaway C16 cabriolet on the grassy hill that served as souped-up sports car row. "It’s always flattering to be asked to bring a car. But we’re not even standing by our car. We’re walking around, looking at them. I mean, look at that Rolls-Royce. Have you ever seen anything like that?"

Few people have. The 1925 Rolls-Royce Phantom I was originally bodied as a cabriolet, but a subsequent owner tossed that shell and had the behemoth before us rebuilt by a Belgian bus maker. The 20-foot-long black body, pronounced fenders and massive fin give the Phantom a hulking presence. Its sloped grille is unusual for a Rolls-Royce, and the fanned windows and circular doors are atypical for any automobile.The Car Classic theme this year was "Dream Machines: Imagination Gone Wild." It’s the seventh year of the event—an astonishingly short history considering the caliber of vehicles on display. "It started out as faculty and students driving their cars out—and it’s morphed into this," Art Center spokesperson Christine Hanson says. "This is a real concours."

The parking lot alone is filled with enough Ferraris to stock a small dealership. Porsches, Lamborghinis, Bentleys and, of course, De Loreans—10 of them, two that went so far as to add a Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor and time-machine coordinate panel, with custom license plates, like BINTIME, paying proper tribute to the Back to the Future trilogy that cemented its fame.

The design show has raised the stature of the Art Center’s transportation design program. Counted among its alumni are Freeman Thomas, who helped create the Volkswagen New Beetle and Audi TT; Shiro Nakamura, Nissan’s chief designer; and Chris Bangle, director of BMW Group design.

Students come to the school—which has programs in photography, graphic design, film, fine art and illustration, but is best known for transportation design—from around the world. They can’t help but be influenced by the artistic exploration enveloping the campus, says Nate Young, executive vice president and chief academic officer.

"I call it the big blur," Young says, sitting in his office overlooking the car show. "You come in with a very singular idea, saying I want to be a car designer. You start exploring that, and then you realize, wow, the film and photography and product students, the illustration students are all doing really interesting stuff. You pass the gallery every day, you look at what they are all doing and it starts influencing you as a car designer."

Belker, who graduated in 1990 and was a Car Classic featured speaker, spent four years designing Porsches and Mercedes-Benzes, before taking his automotive ideas to Hollywood. His first placement was the Batmobile for the 1997 film Batman and Robin, and he’s since designed cars for Spider-man and two versions of the Lexus Concept for Minority Report and The Island.

The Concept looks like a remote-control car that can flip upside down and continue moving. When Belker built it, people weren’t sure which was the front and which the rear. The driver sits atop the front axel and must slouch to adjust to the low ceiling. Also, the purple model on display lacks doors; the only way in is through the rear window.

"You try to come up with ideas that don’t exist," Belker says. "That is the challenge. Even subconsciously, things slip into your mind. You are not reinventing the wheel, but shape-wise and detail-wise you are trying to push the envelope."

Art Center College of Design
www.artcenter.edu