● Now recalculating route · Issue No. 001
Cars that took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere wonderful.
No buyer's guides. No "best crossover for families." Just the gloriously pointless, the baffling engineering and the spec sheets that made accountants cry.
Turquoise over ivory, silver over red leather and a Gremlin upholstered in fake jeans. Ten of the best paint-and-interior combos carmakers ever actually sold.
Weirdest quirk AMC couldn't use real denim in the Levi's Gremlin because it failed flame-retardancy rules, so it used nylon washed to look like broken-in jeans.
OpenAI is the minivan that started a craze, Google is an SUV with five names and Anthropic drives a Volvo 240. Five AI labs, matched to five US-market cars.
Weirdest quirk The GMC Envoy XUV's rear roof slid forward and a 'midgate' folded down, turning an SUV into a pickup. One product hiding inside another.
Headlights that steer, doors that sink into the floor and a roof that folds into the trunk. Five genuinely clever car features that were ahead of their time.
Weirdest quirk The Ford Skyliner's folding hardtop used seven electric motors, ten limit switches, ten solenoids and 610 ft of wire.
A Lettuce, a Thing, a Naked and a Mysterious Utility Wizard. Here are the strangest car names ever put on a tailgate, plus two famous naming 'blunders' that are total myths.
Weirdest quirk Kia put an apostrophe in the Cee'd because 'CEEED' had too many E's. It finally dropped it in 2018.
Unsafe at any speed, the worst car of the millennium and one very famous white Bronco. Ten cars famous for the wrong reasons, and a fair verdict on each.
Weirdest quirk The Yugo's 1986 US launch price was $3,990, and Yugo turned it into a '39-90' ad campaign.
Under 2,000 pounds, under $2,000 and built in record time. The Pinto was a huge hit, a porthole-windowed van wannabe and a legal landmark. Here's what really happened.
Weirdest quirk Ford's Cruising Wagon version had round 'bubble' porthole windows so a subcompact could pretend to be a custom van.
Longhorns in downtown Detroit, a Mustang on the Empire State Building and a 'shatterproof' window that shattered. These are the most absurd car unveilings on record.
Weirdest quirk At the 2019 Cybertruck unveiling, both 'Armor Glass' windows cracked when the chief designer threw a metal ball at them.
Wedges, wings and V12s you could only afford in paper form. Here are ten classic poster cars, why they got pinned up, and the deeply impractical quirk each one hid.
Weirdest quirk The Ferrari F40 had no door handles, no carpets and no sound system. The first 50 had sliding plastic windows.
Is the Cadillac Escalade really the king of in-car TVs? We counted every factory display in the most screen-happy cars on sale. The winner isn't a Cadillac.
Weirdest quirk The Jeep Grand Wagoneer can be ordered with seven touchscreens and a digital rearview mirror, roughly 75 inches of screen in total.
Once upon a time, a little vent under the steering column blew cold air exactly where you needed it. We tracked down the cars that really had one, and counted honestly.
Weirdest quirk An A/C outlet under the steering column, aimed straight between the driver's knees.
To get into an Isetta you open the entire front of the car, and the steering wheel and dashboard swing out with it. It probably saved BMW.
Weirdest quirk The whole front of the car is the door, and the steering wheel and instrument panel swing out with it.
Subaru put two rear-facing plastic seats in the cargo bed so the US government would call its little pickup a car. It worked.
Weirdest quirk Two rear-facing jump seats bolted into the cargo bed, there mainly to dodge a 25% light-truck tariff.
Everyone else gave up on the rotary engine. Mazda spent six years fighting it, then raced it for 84 hours straight at the Nürburgring.
Weirdest quirk It has no pistons. Two triangular rotors spin inside the engine, with two spark plugs per rotor.
One wheel at the front, a fiberglass body and an aluminum engine. Britain's most famous three-wheeler is a glorious mistake, and it wasn't really as tippy as TV made out.
Weirdest quirk One wheel at the front, plus a weight under about 990 lb (450 kg), so it could be licensed and taxed like a motorcycle-category tricycle.
Nissan's Pike Factory built a little van that looks like a snail, is named after one, and was made to be a rolling billboard.
Weirdest quirk It's a working delivery van styled like a snail, and its name is a pun on the French word for snail.
The world's smallest production car didn't bother with reverse. If you got stuck, you got out and picked it up.
Weirdest quirk There's no reverse gear. To turn around you get out, lift the tail by its chrome handle and drag it around.
Lamborghini tried to sell an off-roader to the military, failed, and sold it to everyone else instead. Thirst included.
Weirdest quirk It needed tires that didn't exist yet, so Pirelli developed the Scorpion specifically for it.
For decades, Saab drivers groped around the center console for the key slot. The reasons were smarter than they looked.
Weirdest quirk The key lives on the floor between the seats, and on manuals it only comes out when you've selected reverse.
A brake 'button' instead of a pedal, a car that stands up when you start it, and 12,000 orders on day one. The Goddess was gloriously strange.
Weirdest quirk The brake isn't a pedal. It's a little rubber button on the floor that barely moves.
A slippery Czech sedan with three headlights, a fin, and a V8 behind the back seat. Its handling became a legend of its own.
Weirdest quirk A dorsal fin runs down the engine cover, and a third 'cyclops' headlight sits in the middle of the nose.
The wedgiest wedge ever drawn had almost no rear visibility, so owners invented the 'Countach reverse.' Pure spec-sheet theatre.
Weirdest quirk The traditional way to reverse it is sitting on the door sill with the scissor door up, looking backward.
The weirdest cars up for auction this week (November 2, 2026). 11 picks from 4 sites.
Strange recalls, weird patents and bizarre concepts. Never boring.
Rank the Weird · week of November 2, 2026
One vote each. We count them by hand and announce the winner in next week's Auction Watch and in the Recalculating email. No live tallies, because we'd only be making them up.
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Results are announced in next week's Auction Watch. You picked .
Week of Nov 2, 2026
I really think that today I have seen the future and it comes from 1963.
Jeremy Clarkson · Top Gear, series 10, episode 3 · first aired Oct 28, 2007
Our take: The future in question had a 49cc moped engine and no reverse gear, so it could only go forward. As futures go, we've seen worse.
Verify it: Official Top Gear clip: The Smallest Car in the World · Peel P50 in the Quirk Database
Every quote is verified · Read the Quote of the Week archive
Weird didn't stop in 1999. Fresh from the garage: a lap-cooling vent count, a screen-count ranking, and 12 new 21st-century entries in the Quirk Database.
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Every car we cover gets judged on one thing: its single weirdest quirk. Here's the running tally. For spec sheets and real auction prices, open the Quirk Database.
