Cars
When imagination and folly meet. 1913. Marcel Leyat’s Elicicle
The Elicicle, designed by engineer Marcel Leyat in 1913, was a streamlined land vehicle with an aluminum body mounted on a plywood frame and a radial engine at the front driving a two-bladed propeller.
Unveiled in 1913, the Elicicle had a simple and, in some ways, rational design. But the road was the wrong place for it!
This land vehicle built by engineer Marcel Leyat of Die, a town south of Grenoble, was perfectly tapered like a plane. Its aluminum body was mounted on a plywood frame. At the front it had a radial engine, of the type seen on aircraft, which drove a two-bladed propeller. Essentially a plane without wings, it was certainly an unusual vehicle to encounter on the road. Its real “selling point” was its simplicity: it had no organs of transmission, while a cable connected the steering wheel and the rear wheel. The tapered fuselage made the vehicle extremely streamlined. Its total weight was just 300 kg!
Unlimited imagination: a wooden propeller and a single rear wheel. Certainly not suitable for stability
