extremely strange cars

Some people say that today’s cars are boring. Certainly, when one observes a traffic jam half-full of medium-sized crossovers, we sometimes have to agree. This story is not however about crossovers – rather it’s about the oddest, strangest and downright weirdest cars that have ever been made – let’s take a look:

1. Tesla Cybertruck

Before Elon Musk unveiled his new EV pickup in concept form, most envisioned it would resemble a slightly more streamlined F-150 or Silverado. But no: it resembled something that has possibly travelled to this planet from Mars. Given its creator’s apparent obsession with that planet, that may well have been the point. We await with bated breath what the version people will be able to buy will look like – but it probably won’t be boring.

2. Stout Scarab

Fiat may have a claim to be the maker of the first mass-produced MPV, but America’s Stout arguably got there even earlier, albeit with a car that didn’t even make double figures in production terms. But just look at it – imagine the impact it made when the world first saw it in 1932.

Incredibly aerodynamic, it featured a unibody aluminium chassis and a Ford Flathead V8 engine at the back, allowing for plenty of space for six, but marketed as an office-on-wheels – albeit an extremely expensive one, and that did for it commercially. Designed by John Tjaarda – father of Tom Tjaarda, another noted car designer – this is another weird car that we must also respect for its sheer chutzpah.

3. Reeves-Overland Octoauto

Indiana’s Milton Reeves had been one of America’s earliest tinkerers of ‘horseless carriages’, and was an inventor of various early engine technologies. But in 1910 he tackled a key problem with driving at the time: appalling road surfaces. So he took a 1910 Overland and added four wheels – the theory was that the extra wheels would smooth out the ride, much like how multiple wheels did on trains – and all eight wheels steered. 

The Ocoauto was indeed comfortable, but also very long (248in – 6300mm), complex to build and thus pricey to buy. With no customers, Reeves lopped off one axle to make a six-wheeler, but that didn’t work either, and Reeves returned to his engines.

4. Dymaxion

We’ve got a lot of odd cars here, but surely none matched the vision of this Dymaxion. For in the early 1930s American inventor Buckminster Fuller conceived a new people-carrying vehicle that could not also drive but also, in time, fly as well. It featured a rear-mounted Ford Flathead V8, but with front-wheel drive, and three wheels in total, the single rear of which was steerable. This enabled party tricks – it could move to 90 degrees allowing the car to rotate – but also made it very hard to control at speed, as an early test driver discovered to his cost when he died in a crash, and the flying ambition was dropped.

It was all a bit too strange at a time when most people were focused on finding enough to eat in the Great Depression and interest dwindled; just one of the three produced survives and can be seen today at the National Auto Museum in Reno, Nevada. Famed architect Norman Foster produced a replica in 2010 (pictured); he worked with Fuller, a hero of his, from 1971 to 1983.

5. Cheeseburger car

This unappetising wheeled burger is to be found in Kansas City, promoting the bap-bracketed food medley that awaits you within the Westport Flea Market, should your cravings remain undimmed. Should that be the case, your five-patty burger awaits, floating in an ocean of fries.

Chris Craft and Gordon Murray were chums from motorsport and fancied something that harked back to an earlier era of racing. The Rocket was the result and it went on to sell 55 units in total, including the cars built for the company’s founders. The size of the Rocket dictated a tandem layout and it previewed the central driving position that Murray would use in the McLaren F1. The Rocket had a Yamaha motorcycle engine delivering 143bhp via 10 forward gears.

6. Butagaz Car

The French have always had a penchant for unusual vehicle styling, but even by their standards, the Butagaz car stands out. Seven of these vehicles were made, each seemingly plumped on a Simca 1000 to provide the propulsion and with the steering modified to allow the driver to sit further forward.

The Butagaz cars were built as part of the tradition of promotional vehicles that make up the Tour de France caravan as it travels around the country each July. To make sure the Butagaz cars got noticed in this melee, each had loudspeakers above the cab to blare out advertising messages.

7. Birdseye Pea Car

A small pea demands a small promotional car, so frozen food firm Birdseye based its Pea Car on a go-kart chassis. It uses a Honda engine and was capable of up to 50mph, which must be terrifying given its shape, centre of gravity and tiny wheelbase. 

The Pea Car is also one of the more recent promotional cars to come on the scene as it was introduced in 2005 and made in London. Volkswagen fans will spot the Beetle headlights, which have been rotated 90deg to curve with the round bodywork, and the campervan bonnet vent.

8. 1968 Oldsmobile/American Quality Coach Jetway 707

Flying was glamorous and exclusive in the 1960s, and the journey started well before you got on the plane. At least that was the theory, triggering the creation of all manner of very large and often outlandish ‘airport cars’, of which the Jetway 707 is perhaps the epitome. 

Instead of being based on a station wagon or limo, its creators started with an Oldsmobile Toronado personal car instead. Still, the Toronado’s stand-out feature, its front-wheel-drive architecture, did make a certain amount of sense to making a limousine, but there was still a heck of a lot of work to do to make this 28-foot-long behemoth capable of carrying 12 to 15 people. 52 were made, and a handful survives today.

9. Fastest Shed

Most promotional vehicles are trying to sell something, but Kevin Nicks’ Shed was created to raise money for the Katharine House Hospice, in Oxfordshire. To prove his grand hutch on wheels was the best, Kevin took it to Pendine Sands, where it hit a top speed of 101mph.

Underneath the custom shiplap bodywork built by Kevin at home lies a Volkswagen Passat 4Motion. The original 2.8-litre V6 engine has given way to a newer twin-turbo V6 with 265bhp from an Audi that, Kevin hopes, will help further raise his existing record for the world’s fastest shed.

10. Cadbury’s Creme Egg car

Rather more durable and decidedly less munchable than the chocolate product it advertises, the Creme Egg car was commissioned by chocolate maker Cadbury-Schweppes in the late 1980s. It’s based on a Bedford Rascal van and five were built, their ovoid forms resembling a less healthy version of the Outspan Mini. Corgi Toys makes a model of the car that, slightly disappointingly, proves inedible.

11. Outspan Orange

Designed and built by the Brian Thwaites company of Sussex between 1972 and 1974, these cars were used by South African orange producer Outspan to promote its fruit around Europe. The company is still in business today, and at least three of the Oranges are known to survive, one still with Outspan. Underneath is a Mini, whose mechanical layout lent itself well to reconfiguring bodywork.

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