BMW has recently unveiled a fabric-covered roadster that can change its shape at the flick of a switch - and it's the inspiration for propeller-badged cars both current and future.

GINA is a roadster concept on which the usual body sheet metal found on production vehicles such as bonnet, side panels and doors have been all replaced with a special, flexible, highly durable and extremely expansion-resistant fabric material that stretches across a metal wire structure.

A number of elements of the substructure are actually moveable and the driver can shift them by means of electro and electro-hydraulic controls resulting to a change the shape of the outer skin. For example, when the headlights are not active they are hidden under the special fabric cover. As soon as the driver turns on the lights, the contour of the front ends changes revealing the twin-headlights –just like a human being opens his eyes.