● Now recalculating route · Issue No. 001
Cars that took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere wonderful.
No politics. No buyer's guides. No "best crossover for families." Just the gloriously pointless, the baffling engineering and the spec sheets that made accountants cry.
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 fibreglass body and an aluminium 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 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 round you get out, lift the tail by its chrome handle and drag the car about.
Lamborghini tried to sell an off-roader to the military, failed, and sold it to everyone else instead. Thirst included.
Weirdest quirk It needed tyres that didn't exist yet, so Pirelli developed the Scorpion specifically for it.
For decades, Saab drivers groped around the centre 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 backwards.
The weirdest cars up for auction this week (November 2, 2026). 11 picks from 4 sites.
Strange recalls, weird patents and bizarre concepts. Never politics.
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 forwards. 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
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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.
