Five things: future cars from the past – Stuff.co.nz

While 2020 has started to feel like some sort of futuristic pre-apocalypse disaster movie as we are battered by a raging pandemic and alarmed by increasingly erratic world leaders, you could be excused for longing for the future car designers and futurists from days gone imagined we would be living in now.

Luckily, you can distract yourself from reality for a bit and see how some of those wild dreams would look on our streets today, thanks to the team at Budget Direct Singapore.

Budget Direct has brought a number of speculative concept vehicles from the past to life and reimagined them in todays world in a series of digital renders.

supplied

No, its not a wildly speculative design from the past its what Elon Musk thinks well all be driving very soon. Maybe.

The result is seven realistic renderings based on their original wild designs from between 1936 and 1979, and are rather wonderful, if you ask us.

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Super-Cycle (1936)

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We are sure nothing would ever have gone wrong if a 480kmh motorbike was unleashed. It had a head cushion for safety, after all.

The June 1936 cover of Modern Mechanix & Inventions Magazine promised two revolutionary technologies: television and the 480kmh Super-Cycle.

While television has held its ground since then, sadly the Super-Cycle (and its unnamed inventor) were lost to the mists of time.

According to the magazine the Super-Cycle is capable of reaching record-breaking speeds on its spherical wheels, with the driver safely encased within the bikes aerodynamic shell.

For added safety, there is a cushion attached to the front of the canopy windscreen to lean your head on as you power forward. Which is something that only would have seemed safe in 1936.

Unnamed Chrysler (1941)

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Gil Spears unnamed concept would have been a nightmare for anyone bad at parking.

Gil Spear was something of a specialist within the trade of car design: he mostly did the fronts.

He designed the front ends of the 1939 Plymouth, 1939 New Yorker, and 1940 Saratoga and Chrysler would adopt the wraparound grille on this unbuilt 1941 cruiser for its 1942 Royal.

Spears proto-space-age Chrysler tapers to a point at the rear perhaps suggesting that he specialised in the front bits because he wasnt so hot on the other end - while the wraparound chrome bumper that stretched the entire length of the car (imagine scraping that on a curb while parking...) gave it the appearance that it was floating.

McLouth - XV61 Concept (1961)

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Were absolutely certain this back-to-front design wouldnt have caused any confusion whatsoever.

If you are a total movie car-nerd (guilty!) you will probably know Syd Mead as the designer behind the Tron Light Cycle (which inspired Kanedas bike in Akira) and the flying Spinner car from Blade Runner.

Getting even nerdier, Meads military-funded design for a four-legged, gyro-balanced, walking cargo vehicle also directly inspired the AT-AT from The Empire Strikes Back.

But before all of that the McLouth Steel Corporation commissioned Mead to design a car for the 1961 New York International Automobile Show.

McLouth built the XV (Xperimental Vehicle) and claimed that the car was both road safe and future safe because it would also run on a monorail system... that was clearly the future...

Singoletta (1962)

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Ever wanted to tip over right in front of a truck? Well, the Singoletta would have been the car for you.

While magazine artist Walter Molino illustrated the Singoletta for the Domenica del Corriere in 1962, the actual inventor was the mysterious Cesare Armano, a pseudonym for the famous correspondent and science-fiction author Franco Bandini.

Bandinis solution to a future of traffic gridlock would cost a quarter of the price of a Fiat 500 and ten of them would fit in the space of one car.

A speed of no more than forty kilometres per hour. A minimum of protection from the weather. A minimum of space. A minimum of consumption. A minimum of cost, were Bandinis design parameters for the tiny commuter vehicle. Oh, and it was electric too.

The New Urban Car (1970)

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Resplendent in its metallic brown paint and boasting a huge canopy, the New Urban Car can only have come from the 1970s.

The New Urban Car was a tiny solution ot congestion dreamed up by Automotive writer Ken W. Purdy for a 1970 Playboy article illustrated by Syd Mead. Yes, that Syd Mead.

Purdy and Meads Tomorrows in-city car was a two-seater with a cheap, quiet, slightly greener gas turbine in place of the internal combustion engine, while space is maximised by combining the steering wheel and accelerator into a single fold-away lever swing it to steer, twist it to accelerate. Doesnt sound like anything could go wrong there...

The rear wheels, turbine and transmission were housed in a single unit that would be detachable to make repairs easier.

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Five things: future cars from the past - Stuff.co.nz