Via the Most Viewed Classifieds window on the Hemming’s blog, a concept car that I’d never run across before – the Pininfarina X. One front wheel steering, two side wheels, and one wheel in back supplying power. That power comes from an 1,100 cc Fiat engine, churning out 43 monster horses. * Here’s the punch line – the asking price is $1,350,000 – you read that right – over a million bucks.

*

*

Another web site asserts “the X also possessed twitchy and unpredictable handling”* – a claim I have no trouble believing. A single steering wheel up front equals big entertainment, as the Robin Reliant racing rollover clip below demonstrates. I have no idea whether popping the power wheel off the pavement during hard cornering would help or not, and given the coolness of the body work, I have no interest in finding out.

I’ve mentioned ekranoplans on the blog before; in honor of igor113’s truly incredible photoset, here’s a collection of Lun (‘dove’ or ‘hen harrier’ – not clear – but certainly not ‘logical unit number‘) linkage.

*

Wing-In-Ground (WIG) effect craft take advantage the fact that the aerodynamic efficiency of a wing, and particularly its lifting capacity, improves dramatically when is operated within approximately one-half of its span above ground or water, in what is termed ground effect. If the wing’s natural accelerated flow passing over it is further accelerated by the high-velocity exhaust of a turbojet engine, the lifting capacity of the wing is even more greatly enhanced. In 1966 the Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau under Rostislav Alekseev produced a gargantuan “ekranoplan” (“surface plane”) combining the smooth hull form of a ship with stub wings, a large vertical fin and horizontal tail.

Alekseev developed a smaller military WIG, the Lun (“Dove”), armed with six large antishipping cruise missiles perched unaerodynamically on its back. In 1989 the missile launcher ekranoplane “Lun” (about 400 tons) was enlisted in the Navy. The ship was armed by three pairs of cruise missile 3M80 or 80M “Mosquito” (NATO’s designation SS-N-22 Sunburn), though they were never deployed to fighting units.*

–

Functionally the body of this strange ship was divided into 4 parts: fore, middle, after-part and keel together with stabilizer. Fore part possesses pilot house and a pillar holding 8 main engines, as well as a room with secondary ones. Middle and after parts were fully equipped with test facilities but still have also a caboose and a toilet. The whole keel is filled with power installation for electricity supply during mooring and a complex of radio navigation and communication equipment. A room for a gunner is placed in a cross-line of keel and stabilizer at a height of 12 meters over the waterline.*

–

–

*

Update – igor113 has 2 more photosets linked through from the one above – here and here. The awesomeness just keeps going:

*

*

*

*

Update the second – come to find out – this got Boinged about a month ago, so it’s likely that just about everyone on the planet except me knows about it already. In my (lame) defense, I find that the new BB format lets interesting things slip by me in a way that the old setup did not. So it goes.