At the same time, two of his contemporaries, Aurel Persu and Paul Jaray, penned some ungainly streamliners with ‘enclosed’ wheels, but none ever came to fruition.
Then, in 1923, Ettore Bugatti left everyone gobsmacked with his new grand prix racer. Autocar said of the Type 32: “It’s entirely original so far as its outline is concerned.
The dominating idea is that of a deep-section aeroplane wing, with a dead-flat undersurface, and the entire car brought as near the road as possible.
The whole of the front end is enclosed, and except for the starting handle it is impossible for the onlooker to distinguish one end from the other.” We thought it “reminiscent of a tank”, and indeed that became its popular nickname.
Surely more noteworthy, though, was German firm Hanomag’s 1925 unveiling of the 2/10PS, a single- cylinder baby, for this was the first production car to incorporate its wings into its body sides.
