Rolling Oddities: Bubble Cars and Micro Wonders
The postwar years in Europe saw the flood of strange microcars, small cars that are meant to be cheap yet maneuverable in the city. The Messerschmitt KR200, built in Germany between 1955 and 1964, resembled a road car more of an airplane cockpit on wheels with three wheels and a tandem seating configuration, which compelled the driver and the passenger to sit back like fighter pilots. The Isetta, whose front door appears like a refrigerator and the bubbish shape of the car, enabled a generation mobilization, yet drew attention because of the unusual design. Likewise, the L’Oeuf Electrique (the electric egg), of France, shocked pedestrians with its glossy egg shaped frame, a pioneer of electric mobility.
Backwards, Forwards, and Propellers Too
There are certain designs of vehicles that appear to be contrary. The Dymaxion, an invention of the American inventor Buckminster Fuller in the 1930s, had a teardrop shaped profile, three wheels, and rear axis steering, and was driven by a Ford V8 engine in the rear. Although it had the best turning circle of any car, maneuvering was so uncontrollable that it was never mass produced and one of the cars was made into a chicken coop once it had been retired. France too introduced the Helicron, a 1930s motor capable of making power-on-demand with a literal front-mounted propeller, with no engine, instead of an engine, to make the aircraft look even weirder. It is as surreal watching one rush down a road.
Radical SUVs and Utility Gone Wild
Bizarre vehicles do not necessarily have to be tiny and eccentric. The Mercedes-AMG G63 6×6 stretched the limits of the luxury SUV, with its six wheels, two rear axles, and ridiculous proportions, which were designed to work on desert dunes, rather than on urban roads. In the late 1990s, Isuzu launched the VehiCROSS which featured wild, muscular wheel arches paired with sci-fi styling and a rear-mounted spare that also acted as a design element. The Renault Avantime was a minivan / coupe with an exaggerated glassy paneling and the hinge design of a door so complicated that entering the parking lot should have been an adventure.
Electric Experiments and Eco Oddities
Green awareness spawned its own peculiarities of vehicles. The 1974 Vanguard-Sebring CitiCar was the first in a wave of electric cars, a wedge-shaped CitiCar that, impractical to the extreme, was nonetheless memorable. The 1942 L’Oeuf Electrique, as well as looking like it was, was able to go as far as 100 kilometers on charge, an impressive yet strange foretaste of the future of electricity. Other experiments on the eco-experimental that may have been aesthetically clumsy or commercially floppy, led to the current design streamlining.
Outrageous Concepts and Legendary Failures
History in the automobile industry is replete with concepts that were better on paper. In 2010s, sports convertible and monster truck were combined into one really large, bloated blue monster the Youabian Puma. The Pontiac Aztek that has become so notorious in TV and internet memes attempted to design a multi-purpose sporty SUV but instead became known as the one which has strange split headlights and disproportioned lines. Such cars are cult classics, known by being so unusual in their own way.
Conclusion
Starting with the bubble-shaped microcars to the luxurious and six-wheel monsters, the most unusual designs of vehicles in the world reflect the ideas and hopes of humanity and its readiness to break the traditions. Not all of them were commercially viable or even viable, but they give us a reminder that in the search of innovation it is sometimes the ultra-weird ideas that will prove to be remembered in posterity and design history.