Lane Motor Museum Oddball Cars: Marques You’ve Never Heard Of

I've been into cars since birth. I've been writing about them for a quarter century, and I've attended a gillion car-club shows and concours d'elegance, so it's always a special treat when I encounter some rare, obscure car or marque I never knew existed. Well, in Nashville, Tennessee, there is a special little heaven on earth for people like me called the Lane Motor Museum. This very special collection is absolutely chock-full-o surprisingly delightful examples of the automotively obscure and unknown. Many of the kookiest cars and trucks in the collection are laughably bad home-built one-offs hacked together by car-guy Rube Goldbergs who paid no attention to many decades of accumulated automotive wisdom. (The collection includes not one but TWO one-off rear-V-8-engined, front-wheel-drive, three-wheeled, single-rear-steer abominations!) Herewith, nine volume-production car marques that were new to me and 11 more crazy cars I'd never seen.

Aero

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The Aero company was founded in Czechoslovakia in 1925 to build airplanes but, like Sweden's Saab, tried its hand at cars between 1928 and 1947 and became the country's fourth largest automaker (behind Tatra, Praga—another unknown—and Škoda). The Model 30 was its most popular, and Lane has two examples—a low-slung four-seat cabriolet from 1934 and a closed coupe from 1936. The impossibly low (for the day) bodywork and flat floor are made possible by the longitudinal two-stroke, 28-hp two-cylinder engine and front-wheel drive, and by the four-wheel independent suspension with frame-mounted pure trailing arm rear suspension. The floor is also aerodynamically flat underneath.Production: 7,780.

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A.B.C.

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The All British (engine) Company started out in 1911 making air-cooled flat-twin engines for motorcycles and cycle-cars and then graduated to manufacturing full motorcycles. They entered the air-cooled car biz in 1920 with a conventional-looking design that used the "radiator" as a fuel tank (frequently leading to disastrous "topping up" with water by unfamiliar mechanics and fuel-station attendants). They fled the car biz after 1925 but continued making engines for compressors and the like until 1971 (as a part of Vickers at the end).Production: ~1,500

Georges Irat

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The company name Georges Irat was incorporated around 1914 in France, but car production didn't happen until 1921 and remained rather teetering through the 1920s. Then a partnership with engine-makers Godefroy and Lévcque secured a supply of small "Ruby" engines. At that point a sporty FWD, 1,100cc 6CV roadster model like this 1938 model arrived on the scene to stave off financial ruin. That one looked sportier than it drove, but when the Ruby engine supply dried up in 1939, the subsequent 11CV model (like Lane's 1940 model) got a 2.0-liter Citroën engine and four-wheel independent suspension with rubber springs. The company stayed in business until 1953.Production: ~1,500 6CVs, 600 11CVs

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Rovin

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Robert and Raul de Rovin got into the cyclecar and motorcycle biz in the 1920s and really capitalized on France's need for low-cost basic transportation after the war. The D4 appeared in 1950 as its most sophisticated model to date and met with reasonable success, powered by a 462cc, 13-hp, four-stroke two-banger. Production of the D4 ended sometime after this 1953 model was built, and the company folded in 1961.Production: 1,203 D4s

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Mochet

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Charles Mochet actually built pedal cars that adults used to get around from 1927 until the outbreak of WWII. (France truly is like a whole other country, n'est pas?) After World War II Mochet converted its cars to engine propulsion, and this 1956 CM-125Y is so named for its 125cc Ydral engine. In those days no driving license was required for cars with 125cc engines; a 175cc variant was also available for licensed drivers.Production: ~3,000

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Maico

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OK, if you're into dirt bike racing history, you may know the Maico name, as this company madethebike to run in motocross enduros back in the '70s. The German Maisch brothers got their start in 1926 building two-stroke engines under license and manufacturing bike parts. Later, incorporated as Maico Werke GmbH, they purchased the Champion microcar company to seize on the growing postwar demand for cheap transportation. In 1956, they stretched the Maico 400 chassis to accommodate four passengers but didn't fully engineer the resulting Maico 500 (the Lane owns a '58), and the added weight overwhelmed the front axle. This lead to excessive warranty claims and ultimately doomed the car business.Production: 6,301

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Opperman

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European postwar demand for cheap cars was so great that it drew people in from every tangential manufacturing business. Opperman was a British tractor company that commissioned Lawrie Bond (of three-wheeler Bond Minicar fame) to pen a cheap mini for them. The resulting mid-engine, rear-drive design (just like McLaren!) uses four wheels but puts the rears close enough together to negate the need for a costly differential. The steel-bodied Opperman Unicar made its debut as the cheapest car at the 1956 London Motor Show, claiming to offer big-car comfort. But despite the low price (£400, or $1,125) sales were slow. Production ceased in 1959.Production: ~200

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In yet another motorcycles-to-microcars tale, the French New-Map company found plenty of takers for its line of Solyto three-wheelers. It was offered in three body styles: Fourgonnette Tolee (panel van), Break-Camping (window van), and Fourgonnette Bachee (as shown with a canvas top). They featured a single steered wheel in front that also carried the tiny two-stroke, 125cc Ydral one-lung motor, providing front-wheel drive. Concerns about overwhelming the contact patch might be assuaged by the fact that output was just 5.5 hp, just as performance worries might be calmed by the fact that it only weighed 330 pounds. The crazy name comes from SOciete LYonaise de TOlerie, New-Map's sheetmetal division. This is a 1959 model, but production spanned from 1952 to 1974.Production: 4,000

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Carrozziere G.A.M.C. Baldi, of San Remo, Italy, built a line of Fiat 500-based Frog microcars aimed at urban buyers for whom parking and traffic were major daily challenges. The angular fiberglass bodywork measures just 85 inches long—4 inches shorter than a Smart car and 20 inches shorter than the 500 it borrowed running gear from. The two-stroke engine choices ranged from 125cc to 595cc. The Lane's 1975 Baldi Frog is the muscle car of the bunch, fitted with the big 595cc engine and specced for rally duty.Production: 300

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Hans Ledwinka was an automotive genius and was chief engineer at Tatra by 1921, when the company was still making front-engine, rear-drive vehicles. Earlier vehicles like the Lane's 1927 T-12 truck featured innovations like a rigid tubular backbone chassis through which the driveshaft ran and a fully independent rear suspension with transverse leaf springs, as clearly shown by the bare-nekkid 1932 T-57 chassis on display. Early Tatra front engine covers are aerodynamically shaped to resemble a period Renault. No radiator was necessary, because the engines were air-cooled. And even after the better-known aero-lozenge rear-V-8-powered T-87 flagship hit the road, the conventional-looking 25-hp four-cylinder T-57 sold in far greater numbers.Production: T-12, 7,525; T-57, 26,540

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We all know that NSU was first to market with a Wankel, that GM spent a lot of money developing the Wankel rotary engine, that this powertrain was also intended for the original AMC Pacer, and that Mazda is the only company that really made the concept work. How many of us knew that in 1970 Citroën built a fleet of Ami 8 coupe look-alikes powered by Wankels? Not I. The plan was to build and sell (for 14,000 francs, or about $2,525), 500 M-35 "prototypes" to gain real-world experience. To sweeten the deal, they were provided with unlimited warranties. The engines didn't run too well, and they cost a fortune in warranty work, so by 1974 the warranty was canceled and a generous buy-back program was announced.Production: 267

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I vaguely remember seeing stories about this crazy amphibian with the Alfa 164 taillights back when it was introduced at the Paris Motor Show in 1992, but I have never seen one in the flesh. This is one of the prototypes, powered by a Peugeot diesel engine mounted transversely amidships driving both the all-wheel terrestrial drive and the jet-drive for water use. A Citroën hydropneumatic suspension provided a range of ride heights and sucked the wheels high up into the bodywork when in the water. The seats could be turned around to face backward, but that 74-horse jet-drive with all this hydrodynamic drag couldn't have made this much of a ski boat. With only about 4 inches of freeboard above the waterline, it was not suited to choppy waters. This plus the high price ($45,000) doomed sales, and the operation folded in 1996.Production: 52

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Conceived as an aerodynamic speed-record car, this little beauty's svelte fiberglass bodywork is draped over conventional two-stroke, 1.0-liter, 55-hp DKW 3=6 running gear. Weighing just 1,800 pounds with quick sports car steering, the Monza was reportedly quite fun to drive. The name was inspired by the prototype's five speed records sets in 1956 at the Autodromo di Monza track in Italy, averaging 87 mph over a 72-hour period. Body production was contracted to three karosseries, none of whom kept very good records. This 1959 model was bodied by Robert Schenk of Stuttgart.Production: Unknown, but believed to be between 70 and 240

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Who knew that Honda riffed on England's Mini Moke, France's Citroën's (2CV) Méhari, and Germany's (Beetle) Thing? Starting with its microcar kei-class mid-engine, 354cc, 30-hp, air-cooled two-cylinder TN360 van, Honda cut the bodywork down to minimalist standards, fashioned a canvas top, weatherproofed the upholstery and instruments, slapped a cutesie name on it, and sold it in the Japanese market between 1970 and 1973 for $3,095.Production: 2,500

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If you're thinking this one looks familiar, you may be remembering the Biscooter, designed by Gabriel Voisin for the French market. That one, named because it was the size of two scooters, was well designed but never sold well in France. Autonacional S.A. in Barcelona, Spain, licensed the design, making slight revisions to the aluminum bodywork and fitting a 9-hp, two-stroke, 197cc Hispano-Villiers engine. Later in the '53-'63 model run (this is a 1956 Series 100) the Series 300 cars were made of steel.Production: 12,000

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Rome-based Giannini Automobili S.p.A. has been tuning and revising Fiat cars for years. Back in the Fiat 500's heyday it produced a run of 50 Camioncino pickup trucks, starting with the Giardiniera station wagon body and fitting a drop-side pickup box. Only three of these are believed to remain, and all three are said to be in Rome. This one appears to have been a one-off home-built homage to these Giannini Camioncinos, though it does without the drop-side box and gets a canvas cover instead.Production 50 (originals)

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During the German occupation of France, gasoline was extremely expensive if you could even find it. So various companies offered elaborate conversion setups to allow a gas-powered car to run on wood, coal, or charcoal. The firm F.A.P. Elgazo Tarbes produced the rig that's glommed on to the Lane's 1938 Citroën Berline 11CV Gazogene, allowing it to run on coal gas. One of the two large containers on the front fenders is filled with coal and ignited, producing methane gas that was then condensed, filtered, and fed to a special carburetor. It took 30 minutes from cold ignition before you could drive off, and then the horsepower was diminished by about a third, and the driving range of a single coal stash was just 30 miles. It's believed 65,000 such alt-fuel systems by all suppliers were sold during the war, among which very few survive.Production: 200

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Simca was founded by a Fiat employee sent to France to procure scrap metal. Instead he stayed, became the local Fiat distributor, and then when Fiat bought the former Donnet car factory in Nanterre, France, he headed up the resulting Société Industrielle de Mécanique et Carrosserie Automobile (SIMCA). Fiat ties faded postwar, and by 1951 the Aronde (French for swallow, as in the bird) became Simca's first non-Fiat-influenced design. Flamboyant founder Henri Pigozzi wanted a convertible and commissioned Figoni to build a show car for 1953, but its structural rigidity was hopeless. The 1954 acquisition of Ford of France gained the company access to coachbuilder Facel, which built this gorgeous Weekend prototype. It was presented to a 19-year-old Brigitte Bardot for promotional purposes, and she drove it for years, but no other examples were produced.

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Goliath had been known as a purveyor of three-wheeled vans and cars when this technologically advanced GP700 appeared at the Geneva show in 1950. An early adopter of the ponton-fender look, it bristled with other innovations like a transverse engine mounted directly over the front transaxle to maximize passenger space within the wheelbase. Later innovations would include all synchromesh transmission and in 1952 Bosch mechanical direct-injection—the first in a gasoline engine, beating the 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196 F1 engine and the 1955 300SL to market. The Lane's 1957 GP700 E (for Einspritzung) is believed to be one of only five GP700s outside of Europe.Production: 36,524 (all styles)

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Here's a whole class of car I never heard of. Invalid cars. Originally designed to provide mobility for Russia's disabled war veterans, they could only be procured through the social care system, leased for up to five years. Built by motorcycle-makers Serpukhov Motor Works, early examples were open-top three-wheelers with a top speed of 12 mph, but these proved wildly impractical in the Russian weather. Four wheelers that could manage 25 mph were introduced in 1958, and they were available with two control setups—one for use with two arms, one for use with one arm and one leg. The Lane's 1980 SZD model is a later, improved design with a 17.5-hp, air-cooled, two-stroke IZh-3 motorcycle engine that can do a whopping 30 mph. It was produced from 1970 to 1997, but the total production is unknown.

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