TVR Speed 12 (1996)
Race regulations shifted and TVR boss Peter Wheeler reckoned the car was simply too fast for the road. With a kerb weight of 1000kg and the right gearing, 240mph was supposedly possible; Wheeler didn’t want to sell such a beast to drivers who couldn’t handle the power, so the project bit the dust.
Rover 25 Art Car (2002)
With MG Rover getting up to nonsense such as this. It’s not hard to see why the company went to the wall. In 2002 the British car maker teamed up with young fashion designer Matthew Williamson to create a 25 with some pizzazz, to tie in with London Fashion Week. With its various shades of pink the car was certainly not for shrinking violets.
Rover 25 Art Car (2002)
If the Rover 25’s exterior was not especially easy on the eye, you’d probably need counselling after being exposed to the interior for too long. With its ornately patterned carpets and door trim inserts, plus lashings of neon pink, the 25’s cabin would have overwhelmed Barbara Cartland, never mind the young women who MG Rover was trying to target at the time.
Maybach Exelero (2005)
While it looks like a refugee from a Batman film, the Exelero was never designed for a starring role on the silver screen. Instead it was designed as a mobile test bed for high-speed tyres, bankrolled by German tyre maker Fulda and based on the platform of the Maybach 57 limousine.
Maybach Exelero (2005)
This wasn’t the first time that Fulda had teamed up with the Maybach marque, nor was it the first time that the tyre maker had built a vehicle specially for the purpose of demonstrating its tyres. Back in 1938, Fulda had paid for a one-off Maybach SW38, to enable high-speed tyre testing on Germany’s autobahns.
Volkswagen Golf GTi W12-650 (2007)
Once in a while Volkswagen does do something completely crazy, and for the 2007 Worthersee festival, the company slotted its largest engine into one of its smallest cars to come up with something utterly bonkers. Worthersee is the world’s largest annual celebration of the Golf GTi, so it was fitting that VW should use its then-current hot Golf as the basis for a show car that gave the punters a fresh perspective on this most staid of car makers.