Velorex Oskar

Before you get all indignant on me for even calling this flappy turd a car, remember: carbon fiber is simply layers of woven fibers, bound by glue and cured by time (and / or pressure).

McLaren’s carbon fiber on some cars is so thin it flexes, a very fabric-like behaviour. 

BMW’s attention to GINA opened up several watershed advancements for its production cars. As BMW revealed in a 2008 press release:

“…the GINA principle gave rise to an innovative manufacturing method that allows the manufacturers to decorate outer skin components that have been preformed by conventional methods with individually configured, high-precision contour lines prior to their reintegration into the manufacturing process […] …first used during the production of hoods for the BMW Z4 M Roadster and the BMW Z4 M Coupé.”

Kevlar? Fiberglass? Itchy woven fabrics fused together in a process so user-friendly that any gluehead with a garage can aspire to ‘breaking the internet’ with a kustom widebody of their own.

Fabric is the future, from the past.

Confession: I write about weird cars because they often make a lot of sense, the sort of wisdom that — to me, at least — is so blatantly useful that we’d do well to remember them…

I’ll pause here. 

Let me highlight two sides of the same coin: 

1. I believe some of you could actually build a road legal Velorex of your own, but
2. …the majority of you are convinced it would be impossible for X, Y, Z reasons

Selfishly, I’m firmly in the camp of everyone building their own weird cars — I have proof for why you may agree and don’t realize it — but failing that, it’s crucial to note the vast vehicle regulations that define what we make, buy, sell, and legally drive.

The first car was the Patent Motorwagen, not the DIY Motorwagen.