Franco Sbarro & his FF design

This is Signor Sbarro with his stunning Sbarro design at the Geneva car show circa 2003. Fifteen years later, it seems no closer to production - or practicality. But it's undoubtedly FF and represents some great lateral thinking, including putting the whole "160bhp" engine inside the rear wheel! It probably gets the prize for lowest seat ever too.
Above all, it gives the lie to the notion that FFs can't be stylish! PNB

Franco Sbarro & his FF design

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Feet forward photos.

Just googled the Sbarro Monotrace. Up came a lovely photo of this futuristic, but probably impractical machine. The next photo was of Bob's bananaskin at Riberac in 2014. Made me chuckle. Just how are they connected???? Colin

Winged wheel

It's the Cyclemaster FF! Vehicle engineers, largely absent from the Powered Two Wheeler industry, would ponder how the back wheel could be kept on the ground in a vehicle that takes the concept of sprung/unsprung weight ratios and turns it inside out. It's the actual banana skin that connect this to Bob's heroic efforts - it came from an FF...

I wasn't aware of the notion FFs couldn't be stylish. Obviously there's a division between FF's that were, or are, development prototypes exploring the science (e.g. 001) and non-functional stlying excercises, like the Sbarro. There's also been some conflict between Stylists, (or "vehicle artists"), brought up on motorised bicycles and sometimes cars, unable to cope with a new format and the associated engineering imperitives (usually aerodynamic). But this is normal in the developmenet of new products and can be clearly seen in early cars.

Stylishness in any case exists in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes an FF has been designed to be stylish, and is widely regarded as such. I suggest the Quasar as an example and although ergonomically challenging it is clearly functional, see "34 minutes round the IoM on open roads". In other cases FFs may have "stlyishness" thrust upon them - even FJ, a rude and ongoing exploration of FF aerodynamics, occasionally has people blurting out "It's so Coool!" A person did this yesterday and was actually painting something, although they may not have been an artist (it was a building)

Isn't this the key thing? Style, like "cool" is best achieved simply be being, Effort to achieve stylishness often fail, or are dated. Time, and the unforced reaction of observers is the best judge of stlyishness.

And ultimately, style won't get you to the shops. That needs science. Engineering, mechanics and all that real, dirty stuff, that really doesn't care what anyone thinks about it's appearance. Start with that. When it's working, get an artist to make it look pretty!