The world's strangest racing cars

The history of motorsport is full of weird and wonderful creations, racing oddities that intrigued or confused.

Some of them proved to be successful, even hinted at the way forward, while others flopped. Some even made people wonder what on Earth the designer was thinking.

It would be impossible to cover them all in one piece, but the staff at AUTOSPORT's sister publication Motorsport News have picked out a few. See what you think.

TWIN-ENGINED TEARAWAY
Deep Sanderson DS105

One of the oddest single-seaters in history was actually built at the insistence of a double Olympic silver medal-winning cyclist, Reg Harris OBE.

Alongside his two-wheeled exploits, he was a capable amateur racing driver and, with twin-engined cars the flavour of the month, he went to engine expert Downton to ask it to build a twin Mini-engined single-seater for him to have fun with on hillclimbs. Thus the 'twinny' was born - a machine with front- and rear-mounted 1071cc Mini Cooper powerplants.

Downton handed chassis development to Chris Lawrence's LawrenceTune firm under the Deep Sanderson moniker. There was trouble though; firstly, the bill from the engine tuner was huge and Harris announced he couldn't afford the chassis.

Lawrence progressed anyway. In his autobiography entitled Morgan Maverick he explains: "We duly got stuck in to the build of a real 'weirdie'. I made it absolutely as simple as I could, with a Mini subfame at the front strictly as per Mini, and a Deep Sanderson cross member and suspension at the rear hitched together with a few strategically placed one and a half inch square tubes.

"The rest of the build put the driver in the middle, with a small fuel tank behind him and a suitable body trying to make something that was inherently ugly look good.

"Finally, there were lots and lots of linkages working two gearboxes, two throttles, two clutches simultaneously."

It ran for the first time at Brands Hatch on Boxing Day in 1963 but retired with cooling problems.

The car was rapid when it reappeared on Easter Monday at Mallory Park. Lawrence had employed a linkage that enabled him to control when the power came in from each engine.

At the hairpin, he could set it so the rear engine came in before the front, allowing him to oversteer his way around the corner. Conversely, at Gerards the front could come in first, allowing him to power understeer all the way around the turn. Lawrence: "I remember hooting with laughter all the way around the track."

Lawrence was badly injured in a road crash on his way back from Le Mans in 1964 and the project stalled in the nine months that he was laid low. When recovered he traced the car down (it had been purloined by one of his acquaintances). Lawrence heard about the new Festival of Speed and Sport, a series of six drag race events, and asked his friend Tony Kinch to use the car in the event. He was aiming to use the competition as a shop window to sell it.

The 'twinny' was a revelation. It could gobble up the quarter mile in 10.9s and, given its four-wheel-drive and manageable torque, was one of the stars of the event. It even twice beat Tony Marsh in the Ferguson P99 four-wheel-drive Formula 1 car.

That was it, and the example was sold on to an investor.

FIRST ALL-ELECTRIC LAP AT LE MANS
Nissan ZEOD RC

Nissan's Zero Emissions On Demand Race Car (ZEOD RC) was one of the main curios at Le Mans in 2014 as the Japanese manufacturer bravely took on the task of aiming to be the first to try to complete an entire 8.47-mile lap of La Sarthe at racing speeds using only electric power.

The Garage 56 car was originally designed as the DeltaWing to form part of IndyCar's new concept.

It failed to win the pitch, but British designer Ben Bowlby was determined to continue. The car raced at Le Mans in 2012 with a conventional Nissan unit but retired after an accident.

However, that programme ended in lawsuits and acrimony, and Nissan eventually picked up the ashes of the project and installed Bowlby as director of motorsport innovation.

The car used a hybrid electric power train and two 110-kilowatt electric motors drove the rear wheels. It also featured a small 40kg 400bhp 1.5-litre three-cylinder Nissan engine to drive the machine when it wasn't under electric power.

The car qualified 27th. Not surprisingly though, given the complexity of the powertrain, the gearbox proved to be the weak link and the car retired after only five laps. But the plan to complete a lap on electric power had been achieved in the morning warm-up.

FAMILY WAGON GOES RACING
Peugeot 806 touring car

Think fast MPV and it's hard to look past the daft F1-engined Renault Espace of the 1990s. That was undoubtedly a rapid and memorable machine, a great marketing device, but it never actually raced.

What did compete was a less extreme, but no less remarkable - a Peugeot 806 people carrier at the 1995 Spa 24 Hours.

In those days the great Belgian enduro was run for touring cars, with the Super Touring category leading the way. And in 1995, the local Peugeot importer decided to enter a near-Super Touring specification 806 for Eric Bachelart, Pascal Witmeur and Philip Verellen.

Amazingly, Bachelart qualified the Kronos-prepared pseudo van 12th, but it went out during the night with engine issues. Unsurprisingly, the racing MPV failed to catch on, but we applaud the effort.

THE BTCC's FIRST ESTATE
Volvo 850 SE/GLT estate

The Volvo 850 SE/GLT Estate car certainly gave the Swedish manufacturer what it wanted: headlines.

There was a great deal of cynicism when news of the programme broke out at the end of 1993. Surely it wouldn't race an estate car? People thought it was some kind of ruse - only it wasn't.

There is much debate about where the initial idea came from. Some versions have TWR as the instigator with a proposal to Volvo to help improve its staid image. Others have it that Volvo had already had a test car up and running and windtunnel tested before it made contact with TWR.

Whatever the correct origins of the scheme, the car wasn't as wacky as many people thought when it was first revealed in early 1994.

Although it carried too much weight too high up over the back, which made it a tricky proposition when quick changes of direction were needed, it did progress over the course of the year.

Jan Lammers, team-mate to Rickard Rydell, placed it third on the grid at the old Snetterton layout, which didn't contain any tight switchbacks. Rydell scored a fifth at Oulton Park while Lammers repeated that performance at Brands Hatch.

In the end, the pair helped the firm to eighth in the manufacturers' points (ahead of Nissan and Mazda). But the writing was on the wall: to win, you needed convention. When the team swapped to the 850 saloon for 1995, win was exactly what it did.

WHEN FOUR WHEELS WEREN'T ENOUGH
The F1 six-wheelers

Racing cars have four wheels, right? Well, not always: one of F1's most famous oddities was the six-wheeled Tyrrell P34, which took victory in the 1976 Swedish Grand Prix.

The traction advantage of a six-wheeled car is clear - more wheels mean more contact points with the ground, particularly if the extra ones are at the rear - but the P34 was actually designed to solve an aerodynamic issue.

Swapping two big wheels for four smaller ones at the front reduced the front profile of the car. Despite much bemusement from rivals and the press, the P34 was quick, and Jody Scheckter's sole win for the car was fully deserved.

But it had inherent problems: the complex suspension for the four steering front wheels added weight and the smaller wheels caused the brakes to overheat. When Goodyear stopped developing bespoke tyres, the end was near.

But that wasn't the end of six-wheeled F1 cars: on the test track, at least. In the late 1970s both March and Ferrari tried out six-wheel variants. The March 2-4-0 (using the same wheel-layout-based naming system as a railway locomotive) had four driving wheels at the back, which had the benefits of extra traction but none of the drawbacks of the P34. It showed promise in testing, but the cash-strapped team eventually halted development.

Ferrari tested a six-wheeled 312T6, which had the four rear wheels all on the same axle, in 1977. This made it wider than the regulations would allow and, after two testing incidents, Carlos Reutemann declined to drive it again.

Williams revived the six-wheel concept with the FW07D in 1981, before developing a FW08B the following year. Jonathan Palmer set some quick times in testing - and the FIA introduced a rule that F1 cars could only have four wheels.

A CAR THAT SUCKED, IN A GOOD WAY
Chaparral 2J

While Lotus is often credited as being the architect of aerodynamics at the top level of motorsport, American constructor Chaparral can rightly claim to have been the true pioneer.

The Texas team was formed by grand prix racer Jim Hall and Hap Sharp in 1962, when they took over the existing Chaparral 1 design and bought the name from the creators.

Chaparral's heartland was the world of Can-Am, where free thinkers of the motorsporting world could, legally, do almost anything. The zenith of this no-holds-barred ethos came in 1970 with the 2J.

The seven-litre Chevrolet-powered car was fitted with aerodynamic skirts to seal it to the road - a practice that would later be copied in F1 - and it had a small, 45bhp skimobile motor at the back that was used to drive two 17-inch high fans. They removed the air from the bottom of the car and therefore 'sucked' it to the road.

The ground effects were phenomenal - the car qualified on pole for its first race by two seconds - but the complicated mechanicals meant it rarely saw the chequered flag.

Jackie Stewart and Vic Elford handled the machine and Elford was the only one to score points with the 2J by taking sixth place at Road Atlanta. It did, however, score three pole positions and Stewart set the fastest lap at Watkins Glen.

The Sports Car Club of America banned the car at the end of the season after complaints from rivals who knew that if the car worked properly, it would kill competition.

AND NOT FORGETTING...

When we sat down to come up with this list we inevitably had more candidates than we could possibly fit into one piece.

One of the most odd-looking suggestions was the twin-boom Nardi Automobili 750 LM. The (very loosely) boat-like machine placed its driver in the right-hand boom and its four-cylinder 750cc engine in the left boom.

The car was entered for the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hours for Dr Mario Damonte and Roger Crovetto. AUTOSPORT rather harshly suggested that the design appeared "to have gained little other than a curious shape, for the general handling was none too good."

The point was underlined by its performance in the race. It failed to threaten the class-leading DB Panhards before the last of a couple of offs put it out early on.

In terms of cars finding their way into unusual events, the appearance of Tim Birkin's 4.5-litre supercharged Bentley in the 1930 French Grand Prix must be a leading contender.

Already famous for its exploits at Le Mans, the Bentley was not an obvious choice to take on the phalanx of Bugattis at the high-speed Pau circuit. But, as rivals hit problems or pitted, Birkin climbed through the field to finish second.

Think we've missed something? Tell us: mn.letters@haymarket.com.

This feature also appears in the Motorsport News Christmas double issue, which packs in a huge amount of motorsport action, from the highlights of 2014 to the stories of the strangest machines that have appeared in the sport's history.

The 84 pages should help you through the 58th mince pie and 12th bottle of wine during the rest of the festive period...

- Top 50 Moments of 2014

- Why Alonso chose McLaren

- V8 milk float tested

- Anthony Davidson interview

- Petter Solberg on his World Rallycross title

- Building your own windtunnel

- Owning a Lotus F1 car

- What we'd like to see in 2015