Section · 11 stories
Too small, too thirsty, too weird. Absolutely perfect.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
