Here Are The Weirdest Things You've Ever Driven
From airport tugs to duck boats, Jalopnik readers have driven some weird stuff!
It just makes so much sense that the readership of Jalopnik dot com would have driven some really weird stuff. In some cases, a lot of you have driven weirder stuff than we have! Earlier in the week we asked you to tell us all about your weird driving experiences, and what you considered weird. Your answers didn't disappoint. Some of these are even weird cars offered by automakers from the factory, but they're still weird as heck!
The Legendary One-Liter Car
Volkswagen XL1
The car is tiny. You sit very low to the ground, with a seating position almost like a single-seater race car. It had a very early version of those camera mirrors which felt really weird to use, especially on the Autobahn. And the two-cylinder diesel engine that works alongside the electric motor (the car is a plug-in hybrid) is LOUD when it kicks in.
Dig Through The Ditches
I would say the weirdest thing I have driven was a Ditch Witch.
Six Wheel Motion
Gama Goat
Suggested by Bob
Smoke On The Water
Kawasaki 650sx. Stand up, 2 stroke, 2 cylinder, 635cc. Very difficult to actually stand up on, very easy to fall off of. Me and my friend rebuilt the engine. Thing is wicked fast if you can actually ever get up on it.
Caped Cruiser
2000 Batmobile. I worked for OnStar at the time and we were prepping it for some commercial activity
A Member Of The Rallidae Family
For me, it's the COOT 4x4 amphibious all-terrain vehicle. It's basically two steel tubs connected by an articulating collar, powered by what's basically a big Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engine. The drive shaft setup looks like something out of Mad Max, with a centrifugal clutch like on a snowmobile. The articulation means you can drive the front half of it up a tree trunk, while the back half remains flat on the ground. Ours was rigged up with a spray system in the back tub, but some actually have a back seat.
Benford Dumper
...I've run a lot of construction type stuff, Bobcats, track leaders etc. The boom and scissor lifts are different since you steer with a toggle switch. Site dumpers are fun, sort of like industrial Go-Karts.
Silver Surfer?
As a hotel bellman at a moderately high-end place I had the opportunity to park some pretty nice cars (we had no OFFICIAL valet, but sometimes we acted like it). The one that stands out is an old Rolls Royce, I think around a mid-1950's to 1960 vintage (Silver Cloud maybe?). I don't remember too much other than it was dark out and none of the interior switches were illuminated and few were labeled so I sat there flipping switches on and off until the lights came on. Also the steering wheel, while large in diameter was quite dainty. I drove it from our circle drive around the parking lot and parked it front-and-center...back in our circle drive (opposite curb, full-on fire lane).
Pull Up In The Doohickey
A little battery powered shunter made in East Germany used in locomotive workshops
Quack Quack
The Boston Duck Boat
(ok, I didn't actually drive it on the street. I got to steer for a minute when we hit the Charles River)
A Brush With Greatness
Technically I didn't drive it, but I was put in a cockpit of Tora's IndyCar to steer while the crew pushed the car back. A long story short, I just happened to be there when the car arrived to the HQ after a race season. They were unloading it, and I just happened to be the smallest person there, and the guy (whom my sister worked with) told me to hop in the car and steer. So I did. It was my first and only time that I was in the cockpit of a proper single seater. It was incredible.
Size Matters
A last-gen G550 4x4 squared. Here's why it's weird:
- The thing looks like an absolute brodozer but it rides SO well.
- You can see over literally everything on the road short of semis, and that includes other brodozers and Escalades.
- Because of the high center of gravity and short wheelbase, whenever you come to a complete stop, no matter how smoothly you do it the whole body rocks back and forth for at least 5 seconds after stopping. It makes stop and go traffic a very weird experience.
- Also, everyone gawks at it. I drove it back from a car show we were sponsoring and got stuck in traffic behind an accident, and the thing got more attention than the SLS and GTS we had in our convoy combined, let alone any other nice car that was leaving the show.
Italian With A Twist
For me, its a car I still own. a 1976 Fiat 124 Spider with a Kawasaki ZX-14R engine swap. That thing is just dumb fun. Sounds and revs like a sport bike but moves about as fast as a 90s civic.
No reverse also makes it a bit more interesting.
Plane Truck
I worked on the ramp at PHL airport for about two years, so i got to drive most of the support equipment, including tugs, belt loaders and forklifts.
The weirdest one I actually got to drive was the bobtail, a short wheelbase Chevy pick-up designed for towing mid-sized aircraft around the airport...
Granted, I didn't have a plane hooked up, and i only drove it about 75 yards to move it out of the way of other equipment, but that counts, right?
Run Away, Bad Idea
[No representative photo available, nobody who ever drove something like this survived to tell the tale.]
My cousin had a homebuilt snowmobile, I've no idea where he got the parts but it had a lawnmower seat, a the handlebars off a pedal bike, and what looked like a yield sign beaten into shape for its front ski. I think the engine might have been out of a chainsaw or some sort of industrial equipment. I do know it caught fire when he was riding it once though. I rode that, not while it was on fire, obviously. That is about as weird as it gets for me.