AHEAD OF THEIR TIME FLOPS

01 Electrobat

A modern metropolis with an entirely electric fleet of taxicabs is a utopian vision of tomorrow, right? Actually, it was nearly New York in the 1890s. The 1.5bhp Electrobat had a 25-mile range, but the company ran low on funds just as Henry Ford’s mass-production monster came on stream.

04 Tucker 48

Mired in scandal, vindicated in court, dogged by conspiracy theories of a Ford/GM/Chrysler takedown, the Tucker story is proper movie material. The car was a safety obsessed streamliner with shatterproof glass, huge cabin space, and a rear-mounted helicopter engine.

07 Rover Streetwise

A normal family hatchback with slightly jacked up suspension and plastic wheelarches: think Ford Fiesta and Focus Active, the Kia XCeed... and Rover way back in 2003, half a decade before the crossover boom began to take off. And Rover wasn’t alone in being early to tall hatchbacks...

02 Chrysler Airflow

The Airflow proved Chrysler was studying aerodynamics back in the Thirties – along with packaging. The engine was slid forward to sit between the front wheels, improving cabin room. Interest was high, but the American public baulked when it went on sale.

05 GM EV1

From 1996–1999, General Motors had the lead in the electric car world. Originally only leased in LA, GM’s trailblazer had a positive reaction, but bean counters got cold feet about supplying spares and warranty claims, and bought back the cars to crush all but a few survivors.

08 Dodge Caliber

... because several months before the Nissan Qashqai changed the face of family cars in the UK, Dodge gave us the Caliber: a sort of seven-eighths scale Range Rover Sport. If only it hadn’t had weak yet thirsty engines and a scaled up Matchbox model interior.

03 Aston Martin Lagonda

A luxury saloon car complete with a digital dashboard and touch-sensitive buttons? Surely you’d have to wait until the 2010s to be annoyed by such tech? Not so. Aston Martin was dabbling with miring you in electronic purgatory way back in 1976, but the digi-dash only lasted until 1980.

06 Honda Insight

While the slippery Insight didn’t beat the Toyota Prius to market in Japan, it was the first hybrid to go on sale in the US. Claimed economy was a record-breaking 64mpg (EPA), but the expensive to make and weeny Insight departed the scene before hybrids became huge business stateside.

09 BMW i3

Even before it went off sale last year, BMW admitted it got the i3 wrong, or rather, it went too radical for most of the public. The looks were too weird, the pursuit of efficiency too fashion phobic. What a shame – a recycled carbon-cored EV should’ve been the car of today, not tomorrow.