4 Weirdest Experimental Sports Cars Ever Built!

4 Weirdest Experimental Sports Cars Ever Built!

Some of the strangest cars ever made never won a race, never sold to the public, and never showed up again after their moment of fame. But they made people stop and stare. This video dives into four of the weirdest experimental sports cars ever built—cars that broke the rules, confused the competition, and rewrote what engineers thought was possible. Each one had something unusual under the hood—or sometimes no hood at all. These were not just odd-looking cars. They were serious machines with wild ideas that pushed the limits of motorsport and design. Whether it was the Chaparral 2J sucking itself to the track with fans, or the STP-Paxton Turbocar quietly flying around Indy with a helicopter turbine engine, these cars left their mark in very strange ways.

You will also learn about the March 701, the rushed Formula One car that tried to look futuristic but ended up proving how tough the sport really is. And we did not forget the tiny but mighty Nibbio II, powered by a motorcycle engine and shaped like a missile. These cars all had one thing in common—they were built by people who were not afraid to try something new, even if it got them banned, laughed at, or completely ignored. But years later, they are the ones we still talk about.

These cars did not follow the trends. They made their own path—sometimes too ahead of their time for the world to accept. Whether it was with vacuum fans, turbine engines, or odd body shapes, they all dared to be different. And while most of them only raced for a short time, their stories have lived on. In this video, we take you deep into the stories, the people, and the strange tech that made these cars possible. You do not have to be a car expert to enjoy it—just curious enough to wonder what happens when engineers get a little too creative.

So buckle up and get ready to meet the machines that were so weird, they barely got the chance to race—but still ended up becoming legends. This is not just car history. It is car madness. Welcome to the world of the weirdest sports cars ever built.

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[mkirkby]

Quick clarification, the Brabham BT46 wasn't actually banned as it was within the rules. 51% of the fan's air went through the radiator so it was officially used as a cooling device and therefore legal.

It was actually withdrawn voluntarily after one race because the other manufacturers threatened not to race against it 😂

[olobiksnagol]

The March 711 was called the "Tea Tray" because of the front wing, look for photos and you'll see why.

[paolomargini]

Jim Hall, still alive, is a genius, and I admire him since 1965, whrn I saw the first picture of a Chaparral.

[botingsten]

The March 701 was NOT called the Tea Tray. It wasn't called anything.
It was the March 711 (seven eleven) that was called the Tea Tray because of its oval shaped floating front wing, not because of its body shape.
Also, the Chaparral 2J was NOT a creation out of the minds of Hall and Sharp, it was an idea from the "secret" development labs at General Motors in Detroit. Like several other Chaparral models. The automatic gearbox was a also GM item, not invented by Hall & Sharp. Chaparral cars was essentially an unofficial research and racing facility for GM.

[rabokarabekian]

The 2J fans alone could get the car up to about 40 mph and could make more suction force than the weight of the car, so it could have been displayed hanging from a solid ceiling.

Another car which could have been covered here is the bizarre UOP Shadow Can-Am Car.

[cdjhyoung]

The auxiliary engines in the sucker car didn't produce 45 horsepower form 248 cc of displacement.

[jinxvrs]

11:07 - that's not Ronnie Peterson, it's Jo Siffert. Americans mixing up the Swedes and Swiss again.

[MikeSamuelsII-vegp]

Still viable tech on the Chaopparal, they use a similar design with the Speirling cars.

[bitgamerC]

Wouldn't running behind the Chaparral increase the following car's downforce?

[blxtothis]

A fairly decent documentary but whoever wrote the script needed to communicate with the narrator, what the feck is a deionised axle. De Dion is two words and takes the name from an axle the early car manufacturer produced in the last nineteenth century. One of the founders was Marquis Jules-Albert de Dion, the car company being De Dion-Bouton.

And the Brabham BT 46 “Fan Car” was NOT banned, it won the first F1 Grand Prix World Championship race it entered in 1978 and was then withdrawn by the team after sour grapes from the rest of the grid. The FIA had declared it legal and it had been cleared for the remainder of the season.

And the engine shown to described the single cylinder Moto Guzzi 350cc engine in the Nibbilo looks like a V8 to me not a single pot bike engine!

[robinr.]

Millimeters? Whats that in real numbers?