One of the joys of the Geneva Motor Show is discovering the requisite outlandish European concept car. This year, the honor falls to Italian designer Bertone, whose Pandion celebrates the 100th anniversary of Alfa Romeo with a purposefully implausible design exercise.

Oh, sure, it all starts out innocently enough, with a long, curvaceous hood pulled taut like a bedsheet over the engine. A closer look at a grille inspired by the ghosts of Alfas past reveals thousands of intermingled metal blades, part of what Bertone’s new Design and Brand Director Mike Robinson calls “Algorithmic Design.”

That metallic mashup is a preview of what’s to come when the giant doors swing upward, revealing a forest floor of tangled carbon fiber vines. Bertone says the interior fittings are inspired by both mathematical principles and organic forms, and “seem to have grown spontaneously, without ever having been either designed or constructed.”

We can only vouch for the former.

The form-fitting chaise lounges for driver and passenger look as if they’re hovering in a protective net that our inner Philistine would say looks like a bicycle helmet. We’ll defer to Bertone here: “It is as if the design were following a kind of complex development which is neither linear nor geometric,” the company said.

But where did the nearly twelve foot long doors go? Straight up. Bertone says the extreme entry treatment is solely intended to “bring the ‘wow’ factor to today’s lackluster automotive industry.”  It’ll never be garaged, so why not? Concepts like the Pandion are meant to get people talking about car design, and Bertone seems to be anticipating quite a cocktail party chat.

A final pivot on the turntable reveals the tail of the car. We’d like to think the rear view recalls vintage Italian cars, with taillamps replaced by faux flames reminiscent of all the times your ‘72 Fiat 124 actually caught fire.

Photos courtesy of our friends at Autoblog.nl. Renderings: Bertone.

Yes, the two cars share some basic proportions. But it’s in the details that Bertone goes its own, spectacular way. The Pandion has the kind of impact the Italians use to create on a regular basis with their more free-form, late-60s-early-70s supercar concepts.

Ladies and gentlemen, unless another automaker can upstage it before the day is out, the Pandion is my Best in Show.

Where to start? How about those rear-opening scissor/suicide doors? Or the seemingly random grille details across the back of the car? Or the inside? It looks like the work of a giant spider, spinning a web.

For a struggling brand at box office, Alfa sure has its followers in the Italian design community. But the Pandion is true concept.

Crazy? Wacky? Stupendous? Yes.

On sale soon?

Not a chance.