You know, some of the greatest things in human history came from people who dared to think outside the box. People who pushed the envelope. Inventive minds who didn’t let convention get in the way of creating something outlandish and wonderful. Car-based trucks may or may not fall in that wheelhouse depending on how you slice it, but you’ve got to hand it to designer Adel Bouras’ efforts on Behance: this one’s definitely out there.
Meet the Porsche Traykan — what would come about if, in a stir-crazy stupor brought on by certain world events, Porsche designers and executives decided to actually create a Taycan-based pickup truck. In fairness, the Taycan itself was a huge departure for the Stuttgart-based sports car maker, being its first all-electric model with Tesla dead in its sights. For a company whose bread and butter lies with evolutionary design, a pure EV sports car has been nothing short of radical. That said, it’s more or less laughable that any German automaker, let alone Porsche, would go this far.
The idea isn’t (quite) as crazy as it might sound
Remember the Truckla? That was an inventive creation by Simone Giertz, who dared to actually build a truck out of a Tesla Model 3 because Tesla was taking too damn long to build its own pickup truck. With the actual Cybertruck now imminent (at least within the next two years) and contenders like Rivian coming into play, maybe it takes some creative designers to compel the German automakers to actually jump in on an electric pickup. You never know.
As for Bouras’ design, you can still see some of the original car in the Traykan, but not much. The headlights are connected by a light bat at the front, and that line pretty much works its way throughout the whole body to the rear. The hood and the bodywork up to the B-pillar are pretty Taycan-ish, but that’s where most of the similarities end.
The massive wheels are a nice touch, but those are just a distraction! See, this Traykan doesn’t have to play by the Taycan’s rules, as we can tell from those two massive exhaust outlets at the back. Sure, you could make it all electric, but it seems like this truck could also make use of an internal combustion engine as well. Actually, on a practical note, going more of a hybrid route for a car-based pickup would help with payload, even if we’re just talking about stylistic flair here.
Jacked up ride height or not, obviously the Traykan is just a flight of fancy. That said, will EVs usher in a new age for performance electric pickups? Volkswagen Group does make the Amarok and they’re pushing hard toward EVs in the coming years. With performance marques like Audi, Porsche and even Lamborghini under their wing, we may see something along the lines of a performance truck (again, almost definitely not this) at some point in the future.
Crazy idea, you say? Maybe, but we were all saying that about a Lamborghini SUV some years back, and look how that turned out.
H/T to Adel Bouras for the interesting design, and to CarScoops for coming across this work.
