10 of the Quirkiest Vehicles on the Road

A pair of brothers who owned a bicycle-repair shop in a small Czechoslovakian town designed and made the prototype for this bicycle-motorcycle-car hybrid in the early 1940s. They called it the Oskar, and started churning them out for mass consumption in 1945. The original design consisted of a leather body with two wheels in front and one in the back. Eventually, the company changed its name to Velo and then Velorex, and vinyl took the place of leather. A total of 2,500 were produced and sold, mostly in Eastern Europe. Current owner Robin Layton of Los Angeles was thrilled at one of the more modern-day benefits of her Oskar: "It's green," she says. "It gets 65 miles per gallon."

The idea for this vehicle — sports-car-meets-station-wagon — was way ahead of its time. The Chevrolet Corvette Nomad debuted as a concept car at the 1954 General Motors Motorama in New York City (an event that's been called the birthplace of the American sports car). At its essence, the Nomad is a Corvette — from the windshield posts forward, anyway. But it was built on a modified 1953 Chevrolet sedan chassis. The rare two-door station wagon has a tailgate with an electrically powered rear window and a fold-down rear seat. Chevy eventually applied the Nomad name to its 4-door wagon before discontinuing the series in 1961.

An endless stream of clowns emerges from a very small car; that is the traditional circus-clown-car routine, which originated as a form of comic relief in 1950 courtesy of the Cole Brothers Circus. German "Master Clown" Otto Griebling, who later went on to star in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, is credited with inventing it. This 1974 Dodge B100 van, one of a series of full-sized vans manufactured by Dodge from 1970 through 2003, is a slightly modern take on the classic clown car, with an open roof, bench seating in the rear and a musical aesthetic. It makes you think: How many clowns can fit into a modified Dodge van?

Actors Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis careened through the streets of New York City in the 1980s, hunting spirits in this modified 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor limo-style combination car, which they affectionately called the Ectomobile after the ectoplasm, or slime, secreted by the ghosts they were pursuing in the blockbuster hit "Ghostbusters." It has whitewall tires and chrome hubcaps, as well as an interior rack for storing four proton packs (the weapon of choice for a ghostbuster), and a roof rack that contains various detectors such as radar, microphones, infrared sensors and a satellite microwave uplink — along with a wailing siren, of course.

Every fall, dedicated individuals take to fields all over the world to take part in a type of competition that can only be described as awesome. We're talking about pumpkin chucking (not football, folks). The goal is to hurl your pumpkin the farthest, and this vintage fire truck can shoot a pumpkin a quarter-mile in any direction through its 25-foot-barrel cannon. Other competitors who use fire trucks have outfitted them with compound slingshots, catapults and trebuchets. Experts in the United States and Europe (there's a World Championship in Delaware and a European Championship in Belgium each year during pumpkin harvest) can chuck 'em more than 4,000 feet. The key is to make sure the pumpkin stays intact — those that don't are referred to as "pumpkin pie in the sky."

This 1975 VW Beetle started out as part of a marketing campaign: Owner Howard Davis was looking for a way to promote his telephone company, Datel Communications. He took the chassis of the Beetle, removed the body and had a replica of a 1970s desktop-style phone welded on — a process that took almost a year to complete. The car's license plate reads "Phones," and its horn blast sounds like a ringing telephone. Davis, who repairs phones for a living, adopted the alter ego "Teleman" and can be seen driving the streets of Boston in a superhero costume, coming to the rescue of needy customers.

When Luke Skywalker's trusty T-16 skyhopper broke down and he could no longer "bull's-eye" womp rats on his home planet of Tatooine in "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope," his only escape from the drudgery of the Lars moisture farm came from this beat-up landspeeder, which hovered above the desert floor on an anti-gravity cushion. In reality, the 11-foot prop was a functioning car with its wheels tucked under its frame. To obscure them, George Lucas' film crew positioned the landspeeder (reportedly modeled after a British three-wheeled car called the Reliant Robin) behind rocks and other scenery for close-ups, and for long shots, it was fitted with a mirrored skirt that reflected the sand beneath it.

A pumpkin in need of car insurance? Cinderella's carriage, which channels the fairy tale in theme and design, is one such pumpkin. This coach uses horsepower of the old-fashioned kind (four hooves instead of four wheels), and can be found on roads nationwide — for instance, in San Diego, where Cinderella Carriage Co. conducts romantic tours around town and serves as the getaway car after weddings. Buying a horse-drawn pumpkin of your own is also an option — a custom-built 12-footer with modern and antique amenities like side lanterns, turn signals and wooden wheels runs about $9,000. Finding a coachman and a team of horses is up to you.

This military vehicle can only hit 25 mph, but you won't have to worry about getting caught in traffic — mostly because you will probably scare other motorists out of their skin. The Panzer is a relic of Adolf Hitler's army; it was designed as an infantry-support tank and became the most widely manufactured and deployed German tank in World War II. This particular one, the Panzer IV, is 9 feet tall and 23 feet long, weighs 25 tons and has a turret with a cannon and a machine gun. It can seat a commander, gunner, loader, driver and radio operator or bow machine gunner — or any other variation of passengers you might choose.

Classified in most states as a three-wheeled motorcycle, the Owosso Pulse performs like a motorcycle, but has the amenities of an automobile. Only 347 Pulses were ever built by the Michigan-based manufacturer Owosso Motor Car Co., between 1985 and 1990. It has two seats and a long wheelbase that provides stability and a smooth ride for a vehicle of its weight (1,000 pounds). While it technically has four wheels, only three are in contact with the road at any given time. You may recognize the Pulse from the film "Back to the Future II." It drives just like a car, the only difference being that your body is positioned in the middle of the lane of traffic (as with a motorcycle).

Claire Martin has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Outside magazine. She's the former deputy editor of Men's Journal and currently lives in Los Angeles, where she covers technology, travel and food.

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