The Concept 92 was a design study created by Styling International, a British design firm of around 40 employees operating as a branch of the Hawtal Whiting Group, active in England and North America. The company was founded and led by Geoffrey L. Matthews, formerly chief exterior designer at Citroën. The Concept 92 was unveiled at the Autotech trade exhibition, its name a reference to the coming EC market. It was conceived as a modern take on the Mini, though it shared only the overall length of the original with that car. Its main visual feature was a relatively tall one-box body, with the front hood and windscreen aligned in a single plane.
The core of its concept lay in a modular construction that allowed, with minimal changes, the realization of different body types: a five-seat small car (people carrier), a semi-convertible (fun-car), and a van. This was made possible by a semi-monocoque structure fixed to the windscreen frame, a central-post roll bar, and the rear structure. The front-wheel-drive powertrain sat on a subframe that could itself be swapped as a module, theoretically permitting petrol, diesel, or electric engines; the van variant was seen as particularly suited to housing the battery pack needed for electric propulsion.
The design featured a cubic yet rounded shape with generous glazing. In the five-seat version, the front seats could swivel outward to ease access to the rear, while the split rear bench could fold or be repositioned 5 cm forward. Removing the rear roof section created the semi-convertible, which its designers described as a future form of the Austin-Healey Sprite and MG Midget. They also estimated a potential demand of 5000 vans per year for postal delivery services across the twelve EC countries. The production concept left open the use of either conventional metal or composite materials for the bodywork.
Dimensions included a wheelbase of 1990 mm, track widths of 1385 mm front and 1375 mm rear, and overall length, width, and height of 3050, 1610, and 1530 mm respectively.
