This Citroën Concept Car Asks What If Balls Were Stored In The Quarter-Panel?

Is it just me, or are most concept cars just not that weird anymore? Maybe part of it’s due to budgetary concerns, maybe part of it’s due to consumer expectations, but today’s concept cars are just as likely to be thinly-veiled previews of future production cars as they are grand visions of a future that might not happen. Not the Citroën ELO, though. This thing’s bonkers.

After a bleak run of milquetoast concepts in the mid-2010s, Citroën has found its freak again, and the ELO is unquestionably the strangest Citroën concept in recent memory. It’s an impressive feat considering how unusual the cardboard-incorporating Oli concept of 2022 was, but the automaker’s gone and one-upped itself.

[Ed Note: I already talked about this car yesterday, but Thomas rightly wanted to dig into its weirdness a lot more thoroughly. Even if you read that post, I highly recommend sticking around for this one, too. -BS]

Even the name is weird. You’d be forgiven for thinking that someone at head office was a big fan of Electric Light Orchestra, because ELO actually stands for—and I’m not making this up—Rest, Play, Work. That doesn’t make any sense until you look at the second letter of each word. I’ve heard of forced branding, but this seems downright constipated, especially since it doesn’t make any more sense in French.

In keeping with the theme of practicality, the ELO boasts a monospace form, but of course, it couldn’t just be simple. We’ve seen Bauhaus-influenced cars before, but here’s a cubist car, abstracted thanks to touches like an intentionally disjointed greenhouse, a reverse-stepped roofline, and those fin-shaped taillights. There’s so much going on, it makes it hard to judge the actual size of the ELO, so here’s the wild bit: This thing’s less than 162 inches long, or about 10 inches shorter than a Corolla Hatchback.

We also need to talk about the ELO’s absolutely freakish wheels, a matrix of hexagons that probably won’t be loved by those with trypophobia, but might offer some sort of golf ball effect. After all, there are no spokes here, only dimples.

Slide open any one of the ELO’s doors, and you’re greeted with an interior so unbelievably orange, its doctor wants to check it for carotenemia. Just about everything but the steering column shroud is the color of a Dorito, including the steering wheel, perfect for chronic chip-munchers with dusty fingers. Speaking of the steering wheel, it’s a monospoke design like on the Citroën DS. Just a dab of heritage, not simply smearing it on with a spatula. Unbelievably for such a small thing, Citroën has managed to fit it with up to six deployable seats, effectively two rows of three. I guess now that Citroën and Fiat are both part of Stellantis, the ELO could be considered a spiritual descendant of the Fiat Multipla.

You know how some cars have seats that fold flat into a makeshift bed? The ELO one-ups that by actually coming with beds. Well, by beds, Citroën really means air mattresses. They stow away in cargo area bins, inflate via an onboard air compressor, and are made of the same dropstitch fabric Decathlon uses for kayaks.

Alright, so it’s a little bit Pontiac Aztek, but I can almost guarantee that these mattress pads aren’t used in the way you’d expect. For one, they seem to be partially supported from the ceiling, hammock-style. Secondly, because they aren’t full-length and the driver’s seat is reversible, the whole configuration of the ELO invites questions. Is it the mobile equivalent of that one chair in every hotel room, or is it just extra support in case the EV’s a-rockin’?

That should count as play, but Citroën says the inflatable beds count as rest, so it appears to have given the ELO balls to make up for it. I mean, we are talking spherical objects stored in a quarter panel here. They’re kept under a lid which has “Ready to play?” printed on the underside, which means this thing sort of has the same sort of storage setup seen on a McLaren F1. How about that? At the same time, several seats are removable for use as lawn chairs, you can hang an awning from the ELO, and the tops of the fenders have flat surfaces that double as side tables.

Make no mistake, the Citroën ELO is what a concept car’s supposed to be: Outlandish, radical, envelope-pushing, and not exactly meant for mass production. The fact that it’s a pragmatic little MPV instead of some supercar or garish off-roader feels right, and while we won’t see the ELO in Citroën showrooms soon, it wouldn’t be surprising if some ideas from this concept make it onto future production cars. Probably not the sleeping situation, though.

Top graphic image: Citroën