Some Automotive Fun...

At the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance you'll see the most elegant (or at least expensive) Bentleys, Bugattis and so on... but the same week, you can also see the Concours d’Lemons, where there are... things.

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The good, the bad and the weird shine at the Concours d’Lemons

Celebrating the oddball, mundane and truly awful of the automotive world and promising to be ‘bigger and dumber every year’, the Concours d’Lemons has become one of the most anticipated events of the Monterey week. Naturally, we couldn’t resist having a look at the weirdly wonderful automobiles.
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McMurtry, Morgan, or Ariel; which is the craziest small British manufacturer? This one actually has a turbine charging the battery. Jaguar, at one point early in the development of the CX-75 supercar planned to have two small turbines charging its battery, but they shifted to full internal combustion before cancelling it altogether. It's great to see Ariel making it work now.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS2XwsIFVs0&t=2s&ab_channel=TopGear
 
I love to see how crazy one can get in the real world and a lot of new British sports cars are great examples. On the other hand, there are the numerous attempts at microcars. Small town and city cars took off in the conditions following WWII in Europe but nowadays they're not an easy way to make money and occupy very specialised ecological/regulatory niches - think of Japanese kei cars and Citroën's Ami. However, this one has actually made it over the hurdle into production.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNp_M76wIws&ab_channel=FullyChargedShow


Actually this is pretty close to the original brief for the Swatchmobile, now known as the Smart - that is, space for two adults and three crates of beer.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv9MA2fNiCA&ab_channel=BigCar


Unfortunately, the latest Smart is just another big five-door, and manufactured in China.
 

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