The car's the star
Esquire Singapore|May/June 2022
If you're gonna travel, might as well go weird.
Josh Sims
The car's the star

Rinspeed Aliporta, a.k.a the VW Golf with gullwing doors, 1981.

"The first custom job was on my bicycle," Frank M Rinderknecht recalls. "I was 13 and had just seen Easy Rider and decided I had to have those big handlebars. Needless to say people shook their heads and asked what the purpose was-it was cool downhill but very strenuous uphill.

And the next year I was tuning up my new moped. I think I've always been passionate about technical things, and about building them on gut feeling." And in a big way. If James Bond's Q was a specialist in all things mobility, he'd look to Rinderknecht for inspiration. Through his company Rinspeed-founded as what would become Europe's leading VW and Porsche tuning specialist-the inventor has, for the last 30 years, created one outrageous concept car after another.

There's the Bedouin, the world's first natural gas-powered car, or the Advantige Rone, the first supercar powered by kitchen waste biofuel. But there's also the Presto, which extends or contracts according to need. Then there's the Splash, a car with hydrofoils; the UC, an ultra-compact electro two-seater with drive-by-wire joystick control. And finally, perhaps most famously, the sQuba-The Spy Who Loved Me-esque car-cum-submersible. This is Hot Wheels made real.

Denne historien er fra May/June 2022-utgaven av Esquire Singapore.

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Denne historien er fra May/June 2022-utgaven av Esquire Singapore.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

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