The wildest cars ever made

For at least as long, manufacturers have also come up with some pretty wild designs without necessarily meaning to. Many of their most apparently crazy cars ended up that way for sound technical reasons, or perhaps because they were simply following a particular fashion. Others can safely be described as unfortunate mistakes.

The possibilities are so wide that hundreds of cars could reasonably be described as wild. Here, in alphabetical order, are some which particularly grabbed our attention:

The Disco Volante was a sports racing car derived from Alfa's 1900 saloon and produced in very small numbers in 1952 and 1953. Manufacturers had been trying to manage airflow round their car's bodies for some time, but the Disco Volante took the idea to a whole new level.

Five cars were built, with three body styles. The Spider (pictured) most obviously deserved the model's name, which is the Italian for 'flying saucer'.

The most memorable Alfa Romeos are usually beautiful, and frequently curvy. Neither of these descriptions applies to either the SZ coupe (pictured) or the later RZ convertible. Based on a sketch by Robert Opron (1932-2021), the SZ was slab-sided and aggressive.

It was nicknamed il mostro ('the monster') by Italians, perhaps with a sense of approval and respect.

For a car produced in the US in the second half of the 1970s, the Pacer had an astonishingly modern design, featuring an enormous amount of glass. The radical shape was almost certainly a step too far for American Motors Corporation. Unlike Detroit’s Big Three US manufacturers, AMC was not big enough to offset the risk of losing money on the Pacer with profits from more conventional models.

The Pacer was not a great car, and there were several reasons to avoid it, but the styling was certainly a factor in AMC's decision to end production after just five years.

The Atom is an extreme example of a car's form being dictated by its function. There is almost no styling at all. The body of the car is also its spaceframe chassis, through which the driver and many of the components can easily be seen. There are almost no non-structural panels.

Despite all this, the Atom is one of the most immediately recognisable cars in the world. Hardly anything else looks remotely like it.

Designed by William Towns (1936-1993), the Lagonda was greeted with outrage when it made its debut in 1976. Until then, Aston Martins had been stylish and curvy. The Towns design largely consisted of flat panels joined to each other by sharp edges.

Traditionalists were horrified, but the Lagonda in fact remained in production until 1990. A slight restyle (again by Towns) in 1987 did nothing to change the car's original character.

The one-off Victor is based on the limited-production One-77 hypercar, and features suspension from the Vulcan track car and an instrument display from the Valkyrie. Its 7.3-litre V12 engine was uprated by Cosworth to produce 836bhp, rather than the One-77’s 750bhp.

If the specification is wild, the appearance is even more so. The Victor's carbonfibre body uses styling cues from the V8 Vantage manufactured from 1977 to 1989. The shrouded round headlights and black paintwork help to make the Victor one of the most aggressive-looking road-going Astons ever built.

Although the Audi Type K was technically advanced, it looked pretty much like most other 1920s cars until Paul Jaray (1889-1974) got his hands on it. The brilliant Austrian aerodynamicist, formerly employed by Zeppelin, produced an extraordinary body which was also fitted to cars made by the less well-known German manufacturers Ley and Dixi.

Freakishly tall for their width, these development vehicles were at risk of toppling over in crosswinds or when being driven enthusiastically round corners. But they were also much faster in a straight line than versions with conventional bodies, as Jaray knew they would be.

Like the Ariel Atom, the BAC Mono and its successor, the BAC Mono R (pictured) look the way they do because they were designed to be fast, not pretty. These creations of the Briggs Automotive Company are built very much like racing cars, with an emphasis on lightness and optimal weight distribution.

They also combine a single-seater design with enclosed wheels. The advantages of this pairing are so great that it is banned in most forms of motorsport, including Formula 1.

The Bentley Bentayga luxury SUV is an imposing vehicle, but nothing like as wild as Bentley intended it to be. The Bentayga was first displayed to the public in concept form at the 2012 Geneva Show, when it was known as the EXP 9 F. Reaction to its front-end styling, with two large, circular light units stacked vertically on each side, was loud and mostly critical.

Bentley gave the matter more thought and removed much of the wildness from the design before putting the Bentayga into production in 2015.

Did any car ever illustrate the culture of its time better than the Bond Bug? With its three wheels, wedge shape, opening canopy and bright orange paintwork, the Bug was almost a social comment on its 1970-1974 production life, when Flower Power was losing its influence and before punk came along to change everything.

Despite the name, the car was in fact produced by Reliant, which had bought Bond in 1969.

The most other-worldly luxury cars of the 1930s were generally fitted with bodies manufactured by specialist coachbuilders. That does not apply to this Type 57S of 1936, which was designed and built by Bugatti itself.

The regular Type 57 was dramatic enough itself. The Type 57S was a lowered version. Two examples of the latter (of which the car pictured is the only survivor) were named Coupé Aero, and had the wildest - and perhaps most beautiful - bodies of them all.

The Cadillac Eldorado serves as well as any other car as the poster child for glamorous American vehicle design in the 1950s. In this respect, the peak year for the Eldorado was 1959. In that year, the car featured quad headlights, jewel-like patterns in the front grille and colossal tailfins.

The tailfins became noticeably smaller in 1960. Eldorados remained eye-catching at least until the late 1970s, but they were never again as wild as the '59 model.

The T1, the only car ever produced by Caparo Vehicle Technologies, looked like it had been designed for a motor racing formula which didn't yet exist. Although it was road-legal, the T1 was considered by reviewers to be a bit extreme for use on public highways. On the plus side, it performed outstandingly well on test tracks.

The T1's reputation took a hit when one example famously caught fire at very high speed during a filming session for a British TV show.

Although it looked very much like a concept, the SSR was a genuine production pickup designed to resemble the Chevrolet Advance Design trucks of the immediate post-War period.

The example pictured was the official pace car for the 2003 Indianapolis 500 race. The SSR went on sale right at the end of that year, but despite its eye-catching looks it found few takers. General Motors soon abandoned the project, and the last SSR was built in March 2006, but the model still has a significant cult following today.

Launched in 1934, the Chrysler Airflow and its DeSoto sibling were among the first production cars designed to persuade air to move around them rather than bashing it out of the way. The advantages in fuel economy and performance, among other things, are well known now, and were understood by the likes of Paul Jaray well before the Airflow models appeared.

On the other hand, introducing cars with such startling body designs during the Great Depression was a brave strategy. The DeSoto Airflow was discontinued in 1936, the Chrysler a year later, but they were enormously influential designs.

Nobody who thinks the 2CV was the wildest of Citroën's designs can possibly have seen the Ami. The saloon version of this extravagantly weird car had lozenge-shaped headlights and a reverse-sloping rear window. Neither feature was new, but along with other styling oddities they made the Ami one of the strangest-looking mass-market cars ever devised.

A semblance of normality was introduced when the Ami was redesigned in 1968, seven years after its launch. In a general motoring context it still looked bizarre, but compared with the original version it was as normal as rice pudding.

The DS is widely regarded as a masterpiece of design. It was almost unbelievably modern when it made its debut in 1955, and still very unusual when it was discontinued 20 years later. The DS had high-level rear indicators right from the start, and directional headlights from 1967 onwards. These features, along with hydropneumatic suspension, are more common today, but still not universal.

In December 1999, the car was ranked third in the Car of the Century awards, behind the Ford Model T and Mini but ahead of the Volkswagen Beetle and Porsche 911.

Sometimes a road car is born wild to give its motorsport equivalent greater chance of success. The Dodge Charger Daytona is a particularly dramatic example. Its wind-cheating nosecone and enormous rear wing made it one of the four Winged Warriors, and the first of two Aero Warriors, to compete in NASCAR in 1969 and 1970. The second Aero Warrior was the mechanically similar Plymouth Superbird.

Outstandingly successful racing cars are often banned shortly after their first appearance. The NASCAR organisers were more subtle. From 1971, they allowed the cars to compete, but only with relatively small engines which would have made them disastrously uncompetitive.

The Dodge Royal was produced across three generations for just six model years in the mid to late 1950s. The transformation in American car styling which took place during this period can be studied by looking at this model alone.

The first two generations still had a 1940s vibe to them. For the third, Dodge went into full Jet Age mode. Long, sharp tailfins, without which cars seem to have been almost unsellable in the US at that time, featured prominently. Unusually, there was no subsequent softening of this approach, since the Royal was discontinued after the 1959 model year.

The Corsair was one of the first models produced by Ford's disastrous new Edsel brand. Its styling was not the sole cause of Edsel's collapse after just three years, but it didn't help. Time magazine described it as looking like "an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon".

After just one model year, Ford's designers turned the dials way down on the Corsair, making the '59 car far more conventional. Despite this, Edsel was dead and gone before the start of 1960, its demise hastened by 1958’s sharp recession that brought America’s long post-war boom to an end with a bump.

The latest in a long series of Ferrari Monza models are the SP1 and SP2, which combine state-of-the-art mechanicals with slightly retro - but also very dramatic - styling. The SP1 is the more unusual of the two, since it is a single-seater. This is not immediately obvious, because both Monzas are front-engined and have a propshaft running through the centre of the chassis.

The driver's seat is therefore offset to the left, a better solution than making the driver perch above the propshaft (though this was in fact common practice when Ferrari began racing in Formula 1).

As designed by Fiat, the 8V was a quirky-looking sports car. Several independent coachbuilders created their own versions, all of them dramatic in their various ways. Perhaps the most beautiful was the Supersonic body designed by Giovanni Savonuzzi (1911-1988) over at Ghia. Using his experience in the aviation industry, Savonuzzi created a shape which made the 8V look at least a decade more modern than the original car.

With only minor changes, the Supersonic body was also used for Ghia's interpretations of the Jaguar XK120 and Aston Martin DB2/4, to similarly wondrous effect.

Fiat's second Multipla, introduced in 1998, was a clever MPV with six seats arranged in two rows of three - a notably friendly and sociable arrangement. As if in tribute to the much earlier 600 Multipla, Fiat gave its new model a monumentally peculiar look. Cars sold in the UK had a Fiat sticker on the rear window which read, "Wait until you see the front!"

Halfway through the Multipla's life, Fiat had a dramatic change of heart. From 2004 onwards, the car had a far more conventional design which took most of the fun out of it.

One of the most radical cars Ford ever put in production, the RS200 existed in road-going form for no other reason than to allow its maker to compete in international rallying. With a low-slung body, a mid-mounted turbocharged Cosworth engine and four-wheel drive, the RS200 could have been a contender, but a dramatic rule change in 1987 rendered it ineligible for the World Rally Championship.

However, it has been able to continue competing in other events well into the 21st century. Over 30 years after it was discontinued, it still looks remarkably fresh, and surviving examples are very valuable.

Nowadays there is no reason why a hybrid car should look any different than a non-hybrid. Honda clearly did not feel that was the case when it launched the first-generation Insight back in 1999. With its super-aerodynamic shape and faired-in rear wheels, the Insight looked far more peculiar than its only mildly peculiar rival, the Toyota Prius, which had made its debut two years earlier.

The second Insight, launched ten years after the first, looked very conventional by comparison.

The Italia was a co-production between Hudson of Detroit and Carrozzeria Touring of Milan. The mechanical bits came from the short-lived, ordinary-looking and recently-discontinued Hudson Jet saloon, a car with very little design flair.

The Italia had design flair by the shovelful. The most notable features were the air scoops mounted above the headlights, but even without those the front bumper (with its abrupt inverted V in the middle), the partially faired-in wheels and many other details made this an exceptionally eye-catching car. Unfortunately, it was also very unsuccessful. Only 26 examples were built in 1953 and 1954.

The H1 was the civilian version of the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV, or Humvee) developed and manufactured by AM General. Enormous and not exactly celebrated for its fuel economy, the H1 was controversial in its day, famously championed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Hummer brand is about to make a return with the Hummer EV pickup and SUV, both marketed by GMC. These are also on the large side, but in the spirit of the age they will be available only with electric motors.

The Isetta is one of the most easily recognisable of the bubble cars manufactured by various companies in the 1950s and 1960s. Famously, its front end consists of the vehicle's only door, and there is no reverse gear. Drivers must take both of these features into account when choosing somewhere to park.

Isettas were built under licence in many countries, but two companies are particularly significant. The car was created by Iso (later famous for its very powerful sports cars) and later taken on by BMW, which made many changes but retained the basic design.

The X-Bow was the first car produced by Austrian manufacturer KTM, better known for its motorcycles. The shape of the mid-engined, Audi-powered X-Bow was clearly determined partly by its intended function as an extremely capable road and track car.

However, the same could be said of most motorcycles, and indeed the X-Bow's appearance was devised by KTM's regular design partner, Kiska. Like KTM, Kiska is based in Austria, though it also has an office in Shanghai.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lancia's rallying programme was based on the Fulvia Coupe. This attractive little car was replaced in 1973 by the altogether more brutal Stratos.

Its fantastic appearance was matched by the bark of a 2.5-litre Ferrari Dino V6 engine mounted transversely between the rear wheels. Further drama was created by the fact that the Stratos was a bit of a handful to drive, to the point where it seemed to want to spin on almost every corner. But it was still a wild-looking car even when sitting still with the engine switched off.

Although there have been many changes, the current G-Class is still recognisably derived from the G-Wagen (short for Geländewagen, or off-road vehicle) launched way back in 1979.

That doesn't mean there haven't been some interesting developments along the way. The wildest G-Class of all was the AMG G 63 6x6, which had six driven wheels. With a 5.5-litre twin-turbo V8 engine, it could accelerate from 0-62mph in six seconds on tarmac, and presumably not much longer than that on a loose surface. Contrary to Mercedes expectations, the 6x6 found over 100 customers from 2013 to 2015.

If the curious Isetta is the most recognisable bubble car ever made, the wildest must surely be the Messerschmitt KR175 and KR250. Fans of the British children's TV show The Clangers will recognise their resemblance to the Froglets. One version was also used in Terry Gilliam's futuristic film Brazil, no doubt because of its outlandish appearance.

The Messerschmitt company was involved only to the extent of providing the name and a factory. The cars were in fact designed by Fritz Fend (1920-2000), who wanted to provide transport for amputees from the war but found that his low-cost models were popular with other buyers too.

Latterly known as the Rover 100, the Metro was a small hatchback marketed under a variety of British brands from 1980 to 1998. There is no argument about which was the wildest in the range. Behold the MG Metro 6R4, which bore a resemblance to the other versions but differed in almost every other respect.

Changes included the fitment of a 3.0-litre V6 engine where the rear seats would normally be, a four-wheel drive system and lots of aerodynamic aids whose effectiveness has on occasions been the subject of strident debate.

The third-generation Nissan Cube was the first car of that name to be sold outside Japan. Its cutesy looks made perfect sense in its home market, but seemed radical in Europe and North America. Nissan didn't help itself by making bold claims for the car, including the ambitious (and easily disputed) suggestion that its rear visibility was "perfect".

Describing the Cube as a design object rather than a normal car made more sense, but that didn't prevent sales lasting for only five years in the US and a mere two in the UK.

Like the roughly contemporary MG Metro 6R4, the 205 T16 was an extravagant re-imagining of an otherwise conventional small hatchback. The attractive little 205 was transformed by fitting a 1.8-litre turbocharged engine in the rear, adding four-wheel drive, upgrading the aerodynamics enormously and creating a one-piece rear body section which, when lifted up, gave easy access to the engine and gearbox.

The T16 allowed Peugeot to win the Drivers and Manufacturers titles in the World Rally Championship in both 1985 and 1986.

By the standards of 1935, the 402 was a remarkably streamlined vehicle. Among other features, Peugeot mounted its headlights close together behind the radiator grille, where they would cause the least possible disruption to the airflow.

If applied today, the visual effect caused by this would lead directly to a sales catastrophe. In the 1930s, nobody seemed to mind. In fact, Peugeot used the same technique later in the same decade for the smaller 202 and 302. The 202 even survived a few years into the Post-War era, but Peugeot soon abandoned the unusual headlight placement and has never returned to it.

Generally speaking, hot rods are cars which were modified - often quite extensively - by subsequent owners long after they left the factory. The Plymouth Prowler was a rare example of a manufacturer building a hot rod before the customers got their hands on it. The styling was unquestionably retro, though Chrysler also used the car to learn about using aluminium in a car's structure.

A decision to use a 3.5-litre V6 engine rather than a larger (and louder) V8 was criticised, but the Prowler was always about style rather than performance. After the Plymouth brand was axed in 2001, it was sold as a Chrysler for two more model years; 11,702 Prowlers were built in total.

Before any car goes into production, someone has to look at it and say, "Yes, it's fine. Let’s go with this." Why this happened in the case of the Pontiac Aztek is one of the great unknowns in automotive history. The Aztek was a generally competent crossover SUV spoiled only by the fact that it looked like nothing on earth. The mockery began when it went on sale in 2001, and continues to this day.

The Buick Rendezvous was basically the same vehicle with much more conventional styling. Funnily enough, it outsold the Pontiac in no uncertain manner.

The wildest Porsche 911 ever put into production was the GT1 of the late 1990s. No argument there. It's not even close. In fact, the GT1 had very little do with other 911s of the time. It was developed for sports car racing, but Porsche was obliged to build a small number of road-legal examples - known as Strassenversion, or Street Version - for homologation purposes.

According to independent tests, the Strassenversion had a 0-62mph time of 3.9 seconds and a top speed of 191mph. These were astonishing figures for a road car built in the 20th century.

For nearly a quarter of a century, Radical has been building sports racing cars, many of which are also road-legal. The cars look perfectly at home on a race track. On public roads the visual effect is almost shocking.

Radical is also an experienced engine builder. Its RPE V8 is essentially two Suzuki Hayabusa units on a common crankcase, and is used in several single-seaters built by other companies for use in hillclimbing.

As mentioned previously, the MG Metro 6R4 and Peugeot 205 T16 were extreme developments of ordinary hatchbacks. Both were preceded by the Renault 5 Turbo of 1980. In contrast to all other 5s, the Turbo had a 1.4-litre forced-induction engine mounted behind the passengers and driving the rear wheels.

Competition versions won four rounds of the World Rally Championship, but they suffered from the sport's transition to four-wheel drive, led by the Audi Quattro. Other forced-induction 5s - the Alpine/Gordini Turbo and GT Turbo - were front-wheel drive and bore very resemblance to this car. Renault's next mid-engined hatchback was the Clio V6.

If you wanted, and could afford, a truly wondrous body for your car in the mid 20th century, you would have been well advised to get in touch with Figoni et Falaschi, a Paris-based coachbuilding company run by two expatriate Italians.

Almost every Figoni et Falaschi creation would be worth mentioning in this article. The one we have chosen is the 1938 Teardrop Coupe based on a Talbot-Lago T150. This astonishing design includes the elegant, flowing curves favoured by Giuseppe Figoni (1892-1978). Whether it is beautiful is a matter of personal taste, but there can be no argument that it grabs the attention.

Aviation pioneer Gabriel Voisin (1880-1973) was so enthusiastic about flying machines that he named his car company Avions Voisin, which translates into English as Voisin Aeroplanes. Although several of his cars were conventional in design, others - including the astonishing C6 Laboratoire racer of 1923 - demonstrated his fascination with aerodynamics, and were very quirky in design.

Both of these factors are evident in the Voisin C25 Aérodyne. While other C25s were elegant and upright, the Aérodyne was a thing of swoopy loveliness. The polished metal bars connecting the radiator grille housing with the front wings also appeared on other Voisin models.