29 extremely strange cars

Slide of 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: Slide of Leyat Helica In 1909 Frenchman Marcel Leyat aspired to build an aircraft but ran out of money so instead turned his hand to produce a plane without wings – and the Helica was born. Made of wood, it was light and quite efficient in its own way and could hit 106mph, but although interest was high after it appeared at the 1921 Paris motor show, just 30 were ever built as production was tricky. Just four of them survive today, it seems. Slide of 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. And now the production version has been unveiled - and remarkably, it's little changed from the concept. Slide of Fiat Multipla The first Fiat to carry the Multipla name was the 600 Multipla of 1956, a tiny 3531mm-long machine that theoretically could carry six people and can reasonably make a claim to be the world’s first MPV. The Multipla of 1998 was in many ways also ingenious – it too was a six-seater, carrying this off by having two rows of three seats – astonishingly clever packaging in a car less than four metres long. But its looks were controversial to say the least, and it seems even Fiat were taken aback as the 2004 facelift toned that appearance down by 80%.  Slide of 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. Slide of 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 an 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. Slide of 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. Slide of Zippo car The heyday of promotional vehicles in 1940s America coincided with a time when smoking was highly fashionable. To make the most of this, lighter manufacturer Zippo commissioned its own vehicle based on a 1947 Chrysler New Yorker. The centre section was a scale replica of one of its famous lighters, complete with flip top and flame. The height of the Zippo car meant its drivers had to be very careful when approaching bridges, but that didn’t stop them taking the car to all 48 contiguous states of the US. The original Zippo car disappeared without trace in the 1950s, but Zippo recreated it in 1998 based on another Chrysler