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.
This story is from the May/June 2022 edition of Esquire Singapore.
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This story is from the May/June 2022 edition of Esquire Singapore.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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