NISSAN CONCEPT 20-23; A CLOSER LOOK

The Nissan Concept 20-23 is an all-electric urban sports concept car unveiled by Nissan Design Europe (NDE) to mark the studio's 20th anniversary in London. Designed with no commercial constraints by a team that includes the younger members of NDE, the concept is a direct answer to one open brief: build the car you would most want to drive on the streets of the city where you work. The name encodes two ideas simultaneously: 20 years of NDE in London and the traditional Japanese reading of the Nissan name, ni (2) san (3), written across the year of unveiling.

Exterior: Aerodynamic Aggression Meets Urban Proportions

The Concept 20-23 is built on a compact three-door hatchback body, but its silhouette reads as a racing machine rather than a city car. Extreme aerodynamic addenda front and rear, deep side skirts that channel airflow through brake-cooling apertures and venting slots behind the front wheels, extended muscular wheel arches and a rear spoiler calibrated to maximise downforce without blocking the rear window define the exterior. The full-width horizontal bar below the rear hatchback gives the car visual breadth that belies its compact footprint. Grey textured paint and thin semi-circular LED headlights complete an appearance that sits close to a concept sketch in three dimensions.

The design lineage traces back to Nissan's celebrated Pike car series, including the Be-1, Pao, Figaro and S-Cargo, compact neo-retro concept cars from the late 1980s and early 1990s that defined a brief, beloved chapter in Nissan's design history. The Concept 20-23 applies that tradition of unconstrained creativity to an electric performance brief rather than a nostalgic one.

Interior: Racing Functionality, Luxury Execution

Entry is through two scissor doors. Inside, two deep bucket seats with integrated head support and side bars define the occupant space. The bucket seat trim is near-white, the steering column is extended and topped by a rectangular sports wheel on a carbon fibre mount, and metal structural beams hold the centre console in place. The floor spine of the car's architecture is left deliberately visible: a design choice that celebrates engineering transparency over upholstery coverage. Two screens provide driving information with minimal distraction, drawing a direct reference to Nissan's Formula E racing simulator setups, where data density and visual clarity are the only priorities.

The concept was unveiled on a floating barge moored on the Paddington Basin stretch of the Grand Union Canal, directly outside the NDE studio, a setting that matched the unconventional spirit of the car itself. As Hypebeast noted, the Concept 20-23 is a studio exercise with the emotional register of a show car, built to ask what NDE would design if nothing were off the table.

Photo: NISSAN

Concept Cars and Automotive Art Worth Exploring

The Nissan Concept 20-23 sits in a tradition of automotive design that values the sketch over the spreadsheet. For those drawn to cars as objects of aesthetic ambition, the TheArsenale cars collection brings together hypercars, concept builds and custom vehicles that treat driving as a design discipline. The RIOCAM automotive photography collection offers a complementary lens on the same passion, capturing iconic vehicles in print form. TheArsenale also carries the RIOCAM Car and Fashion Book Volume 2 for those who prefer their automotive obsession in print.