The Truly Bizarre Concept Vehicle That Tried To Combine Cars And Motorcycles

The '80s were full of neon, tall hair, and some very peculiar concepts. The bizarreness that accompanied that decade wasn't just confined to the United States. Over in Italy, a car design company unleashed one of the wildest ideas seen in any decade. 

During the 1986 Turin Motor Show, Italdesign unveiled the Machimoto, its attempt at creating a symbiotic mix between a car and a motorcycle. In fact, "Machimoto" is a combination of the words "machina," the Italian word for car, and "motociclo," the word for motorcycle. According to the company, they created the vehicle so its occupants could have fun on the open road, much like they did with Dune Buggies in previous decades.

The wildly futuristic-looking Machimoto was built around the same 1.8-liter (1,781cc), 16-valve inline 4-cylinder dual overhead cam engine found in the Volkswagen Golf GTI, and it had 139 horsepower. According to Autolist, the average horsepower for a compact car is 130 horsepower. But similarities between the Volkswagen and Machimoto ended there.

The contraption — because let's be honest, nothing quite defines strange looking and unsafe as the Machimoto — was a nine-seat "low slung" open-air sports car ... motorcycle. It had four wheels like a car, but its two parallel rows of saddle-like seating made it a bike. Or so Italdesign wanted buyers to believe. Six passengers could straddle their seats like they were sitting on a motorcycle, while three more could conceivably get cozy in the back. There was also a luggage compartment (aka a trunk). The vehicle also has individual lap belts with two anchor points and two side-impact protection arms that worked like gull-wing doors when opened. A sizeable rear roll bar rounded out the "safety" features of the Machimoto.

At the time, both critics and the public blasted the design. As a result, the car never made it into production. Interestingly enough, 20 years later, in 2006, Volkswagen showed off a three-wheeled GX3 concept that would have been manufactured had it been better received. While the Machimoto never made it onto the road, according to Italdesign, it did appear in a 1996 Italian time-jumping fantasy film called "A spasso nel tempo."