Take one dynamically unstable, extremely harmful car platform – the venerable quad bike – and juice it up with greater than a thousand horsepower, and you have got an absolute widowmaker. However is it the final widowmaker? Let’s assess the competitors.
I assumed the Engler Superquad was “a barely rideable demise machine” once I first noticed it in 2019. Again then, it was pootling round on a paltry 850 horsepower out of its Audi-sourced 5.2-liter V10. However it appears within the march to manufacturing, Engler has managed to tease out a number of extra ponies. When the Engler Desat made its debut ultimately 12 months’s Salon Privé, it promised a dastardly 1,100 horses.
Now look, final time we up to date our listing of the world’s strongest manufacturing vehicles, there have been some 26 hypercars on the market making greater than 1,100 horsepower. There are most likely a number of extra, now. However all of these have seat belts and windscreens.
Engler
The Engler Desat has neither. You sit on the factor like a motorbike, held in by an extravagant bump cease behind the seat as you hit the fuel, passing 100 km/h (62 mph) in a conservative-sounding 2.5 seconds in your strategy to an alleged high velocity of 350 km/h (217 mph).
I’ve approached 300 km/h (186 mph) on a motorbike in open air, and let me inform you, that is fairly an expertise. The wind was pushing again so arduous on my helmet that my nostril was flattening in opposition to my visor, and the buffeting was shaking my head round so arduous I used to be seeing double.
However even then, bikes lean superbly into curves. Quad bikes, for the principle half, don’t. So whereas high-speed, high-g cornering may be very a lot on the menu in your common superbike – or with the large wheelbase of a supercar, pitching the narrow-track Engler Desat into a quick flip strikes me as a really fast strategy to depart your Earthly considerations behind, being flung off the bike to the surface of the nook, or steering your self right into a tree making an attempt desperately to hold on.
Engler
Sufficient mentioned; this factor horrifies us. However it’s not alone, and it made me surprise: what are probably the most scary autos we have seen over the 20-plus years we have been doing this entire Gizmag/New Atlas caper? And are any of them an objectively worse concept than Engler’s coffin-stuffing masterpiece? I went on an entertaining journey by the archives, and dug up some wonderful contenders. Listed below are my favorites:
InMotion
The V13 Challenger has the doubtful honor of being the world’s quickest and strongest manufacturing unicycle, with a 10-kW motor that may speed up a hapless meatbag up close to freeway speeds, with nothing however weight-shifting to regulate the steering and brakes. Honest go, that is received to be within the combine.
In an analogous vein, Canadian designer Ben Gulak instructed us in 2010 a few weird three-wheeler he was constructing that might sandwich the wheels collectively right into a unicycle-style configuration at low speeds, after which reconfigure itself into one thing nearer to a motorbike by sliding the center wheel to the entrance of the chassis and pushing the rear two wheels collectively. We’re OK with the truth that we have by no means been requested to check certainly one of these.
Kevin Van Campenhout/Artcurial
Transferring as much as three wheels, you may keep in mind the Reliant Robin, which introduced us arguably certainly one of Jeremy Clarkson’s best moments of extremely unstable automotive comedy. Prime Gear may need performed up the Robin’s cornering instability by enjoying with the diffs, however there’s nonetheless no excuse for the following machine on our listing: the Bond Bug, which took the Robin’s wobbly chassis and added a extremely sporty physique equipment, in addition to the engine from a Yamaha R1 superbike. No, no, a thousand instances no.
Tim Scott/Concours of Magnificence
On the earth of four-wheelers, most of those are vehicles and thus comparatively protecting of their occupants. Some are extraordinarily quick electrical skateboards, and people definitely give us the willies. However we would wish to name out a historic entrant right here within the Leyat Helica propeller automotive, a splendidly unhealthy concept from 1921 that nonetheless noticed 30 of these items constructed. There are too many issues right here to name out, together with blasting the motive force’s eyes with wind and stones underneath acceleration, however two quotes from our 2020 article are value repeating: with none factory-fitted shielding on the propeller, “errant pedestrians and wayward pigeons alike may find yourself getting fed by a a number of thousand-rpm blender, showering driver and passenger with an exuberance of gore” – and “the spinning mass of the wood prop may flip right into a extremely energetic constellation of airborne shrapnel within the occasion of a rear-ender.”
Hoversurf
At this level, we depart the wheels behind and look skyward. Considered one of our favorites needs to be Russia’s Hoversurf Scorpion, a quad-rotor flying motorbike apparently designed for aspiring amputees. At all times able to throw cash at spectacularly unhealthy concepts so long as they’re spectacular sufficient, Dubai determined to purchase some for its police pressure. And certain sufficient, the primary crash footage surfaced quickly after.
A particular point out has to go to China’s Wu Zhongyuan right here, who took some metal pipe, some planks, some procuring trolley wheels and a 150cc scooter motor, and constructed a horrifyingly rickety yard helicopter again in 2009. Even the Chinese language authorities would not let him fly the factor, regardless of how a lot he requested, so hopefully he’ll survive lengthy sufficient to give you one thing even worse for us sooner or later.
Zapata
After which there’s the jet-powered private flight enviornment, the place regardless of the palpable lunacy of as we speak’s absolutely useful jetpacks, jet fits, and jetwings, one man appears to have discovered a strategy to make issues even scarier. That’d be Frenchman Franky Zapata, who usually will get round on a 250 km/h Inexperienced Goblin-style jetboard, however who’s now engaged on the jet-powered flying deck chair sort plane above, which guarantees to go simply as quick, and likewise do flips.
How would you rank this listing of widowmakers – and what have we missed? Is there a terrifying car in your individual previous that charges a point out? Tell us within the feedback under.
Supply: Engler
