Weird Car

Drive with the fishes

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If you have ever wanted to go for a drive under the sea the sQuba is the car for you. This aquatic vehicle is going to be on display at the Geneva Motorshow which starts on the 6th of March. The car can actually drive underwater up to about 10 metres. Designed by Rinspeed who are from Switzerland and have made quiet a few interesting show cars over the years, the vehicle can also be used on land as a car. The car uses two Sea Bob jet drives and have special louvers which control the water intake to help the vehicle drive through water. The little sports car looking vehicle was designed to be open top for safety concerns as it was thought opening the doors underwater might cause a problem and the open design also assisted buoyancy. We are not sure how much or when we might be able to have one but we are sure there are plenty of people who would love a novel vehicle like this.

That Pacer sure is ugly

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When designers come up with new car designs you would think they would go out to market research just to check that the public like it and then do a few tweaks. Even if they stuff up you would think management would say.. hey no one is going to like that and send them back to the drafting table, well what went on here? The AMC Pacer would have to be the ugliest car of all time, there isn’t a bit you could like. There have been several polls for the ugliest car over the year but the Pacer comes up tops most times, The AMC Gremlin (its sister) always ranks high, as does the Ford Pinto, The Chevy Aztek and the poor old Edsel from Ford. The Pacer was a two door compact produced between 1975 and 1980 it more resembled a jellybean on wheels than a car. You might remember the “Mirthmobile” in the Hit 90’s movie Wayne’s World and they had a stretched and convertible one in the sequel. The car also came in a station wagon form and with lovely wood panelling that was also just as hideous. The only thing I can’t understand with the whole Pacer story is AMC made 280,000 of them, who would have bought one?

If you have a Pacer and think we are being a bit unfair or have another ugly car to note drop us a line!

Argentina’s Ford Falcon

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The Ford Falcon is Ford Australia’s flagship with 48 plus year history, Before becoming a uniquely Australian model in the late 1960’s the early vehicles were based on the 1959 US Ford Falcon. The same thing happend in Argentina, but unlike Ford Australia they kept pretty much the same design with a few modern tinkers up until 1991. Nearly half a million Argentinan Ford Falcons were produced, there was a facelift in the 1980’s which morphed a Ford Cortina like front and rear to the car and a new dash panel which looked like it came straight out of the European Cortina. The Falcon was very popular with the Police in Argentina and trusted design proved fairly reliable. Today Argentina sells many of the European Ford products like Mondeo, Focus, Fiesta and a facelifted version of the Ford Ka, which appears to be only for the South American market.

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The Obvio 828- cute and colourful

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The Obvio 828 is from Brazil and after a few delays will go on sale later this year for a street price of about $14,000 US. The cute little vehicle is being marketed as a high performance microsport car with seating for three, side by side on a what has been described as a comfy sofa. The car’s overall length is only 2650 mm long and weighs in at only 600kg and has most of the features you would want from a modern car with exceptional safety and good comfort and an impressive aluminum chassis . The car has been developed by Lotus Engineering and will feature an engine which will run on any mix of ethanol and petrol and has a manual ZF continuously variable transmission and the engine is built by Tritec which is a joint venture between BMW and DaimlerChrysler. There will be an electric plug-in version released early next year but the price will skyrocket to about $49,000 US. It will be able to reach speeds of 120mph and will charge in around 5 hours using some innovative lead cobalt battery technology. If you think the outside is a bit out there, wait until you see the inside, the body colours move inside and it looks very funky. There are going to be a huge range of add on accessories including IMobile which is a internet system and plenty of MP3 and video ad ons, they are really going to appeal to the beautiful and young who want to be seen.

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The Volga – with a Ruski Jeremy Clarkson

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Russian vehicles are so interesting and ‘stylish’, so lets do another, Today it’s the Volga, based on the Gaz-24 first introduced in 1967 the GAZ Volga has been in production constantly since then and has been modernized several times over its lifespan but keeps the same basic shell as the 1967 cars. While traditionally used by taxi cabs, the police, the KGB and party officials some Volga’s were sold to private buyers and since the fall of the Soviet Union the GAZ company have been trying to lure more buyers away from modern imports to the home grown Volga. Recently GAZ announced they were getting out of car production to concentrate on trucks, but then back flipped by buying the rights to the US Chrysler Sebring platform. They plan to develop new cars of the Chysler platform while continuing production of the Volga, targeting the retro vehicle market. The video above is a Russian motoring show road test of the late 90s GAZ-3110 we don’t know any Russian but we are sure this guy is as funny as Jeremy Clarkson.

Click to the next page to see the very special current model known as a GAZ-31105

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Was that you screwing around, Comrade?

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This is amazing you have got to check the video out for this one!

This odd screw propelled vehicle is an all terrain vehicle that was produced by Zil in Russia. While not known too well known outside Russia, Zil is known for producing limousines that were favorites of high ranking soviet officials and leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and Fidel Castro. Zil also produce heavy road, offroad and military vehicles, some of these heavy machines are not like any thing you have seen before like the propeller driven snow mobile known as an aerosan and this odd contraption in the video above that can only be described as a cross between a tank and a ships screw. The beast is known as a ZIL-29061 and judging by the video was produced some time around the seventies.

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Could the Mini Moke be on the way back?

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We were visiting http://news.windingroad.com earlier and found this interesting spy shot. it is believed to be a test mule from BMW. From the picture it is easy to see the front is very mini like- the body looks all wrong to be a Mini, and we just had the new models released- could it be the return of the Moke? There has been rumors doing the rounds for some time now that BMW were working on a 4×4 crossover style Mini- the return of the Moke would be the perfect vehicle. Imagining what’s under this yellow camouflage its not hard it think there might be an open top buggy- time will probably tell. The original Moke was designed by the then Mini owner BMC from about 1964. They became extremely popular as a low cost and rather rugged little car. They were later built in Portugal and Australia where they were very popular. Australia even exported the Moke, the Israeli Army were one of their major customers where machines guns were mounted to the front of the car.

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The Holzenbliz Electric Car

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We couldn’t find a great deal of English information on the Hotzenbliz Electric Car. We took this photo at the Sinsheim Auto & Technic Museum in Germany. The car was produced in the mid 1990’s and only about 150 were produced looking a bit like a cross between a golf buggy and the Smart Car. The cars were manufactured in the German town of Suhl and didn’t take off due to performance and battery life. The battery took about 5 hours to charge and the maximum range was about 80km with impressive speeds of 120kmh. Some of the cars were later updated with new battery technology from a Swiss firm and were much more suitable, but it seems the poor old Holzenbliz manufactures went bankrupt in the process.