The GAC Barchetta is a concept car tailor-made for Italian sports car enthusiasts

A new concept sports car from GAC Design has just been introduced, showing off an Italian-inspired design and the latest automotive technology.

The concept car, called the GAC Barchetta, recalls the classic Italian sports cars of decades past with its windshield-less and roof-less design. The car also has a noticeably flat profile with headlights that raise and lower from the body of the car.

"The main concept of GAC Barchetta is to celebrate efficiency and simplicity that makes a design modern by splitting the project into three parts," GAC Design wrote on its YouTube video introducing the Barchetta, "Part 1: The chassis is ultra-flat and contains compact batteries similar in concept to a giant mobile phone. Part 2: The 'mono-material' aluminum body is lightweight, simple, and timeless, yet very distinctive.Part 3: Minimal interior features a compact drive-by-wire steering wheel and seats made from recycled plastic materials. The seats are suspended to a shell that weighs only 3 kg, and the tension on the straps provides strength for support."

GAC Design has been around since 2006, but this is the first vehicle produced by its Milan-based design team. The company also has teams in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Los Angeles.

When will you be able to drive it?

As cool of a design as the GAC Barchetta might be, it's not likely to show up on your street corner — or your garage — any time soon. Concept cars like this are just that: concepts. They are intended to prove design principles and aesthetics rather than become full production vehicles.

That's not to say that you won't see cars like the GAC Barchetta in the future, however. Automotive engineers often look to concept vehicles for inspiration when designing new vehicles that you will one day actually be able to buy and drive yourself, so one day down the road, you might see sports car companies actually take design elements from the GAC Barchetta and incorporate them into their own designs, like the flat-profile and other features.

However, most concept cars never have that kind of impact and simply become fascinating time capsules of experimental designs, including some truly bizarre concept cars that have to be seen to be believed.