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Six Wheels of Passion: Cars That Created Controversy Through Ingenuity

The more the merrier? Well not quite. As we all know, there’s been an ongoing hustle between car enthusiasts and motorbike fans as to how many wheels are appropriate for a motorized road vehicle.
Tyrrell P34 Formula 1 Car 21 photos
Photo: Formula 1
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Some say two, others say four, but there’s a logic behind each claim, as both variants are really good for their purpose, and both having their ups and downs. Somehow, as it often happens, there were the ones that thoroughly believed neither answer is good enough, and six is better.

For an armored personnel carrier, or some other military all-terrain behemoth, this would all make sense. But the next vehicles are nothing of that sort, they’re convertibles, sports cars and even Formula 1 cars that somehow managed to make a board of executives say “Yes, that’s a great idea, let’s go with that!

With that in mind we’ve picked a few models that proudly rocked six wheels - more so, we went with the ones that have four in the front and two at the back.

The Legendary Tyrrell P34

The idea of design engineers from Tyrrell Racing was simple and had to do mostly with aerodynamics. They wanted to reduce the height of the front wheels in order to achieve a slicker design, and increase the number of tires to produce a bigger spot of contact with the tarmac.

On paper, the design of Derek Gardner made sense. The car promised an increased contact with the road by a significant margin, therefore the front brakes were also supposed to consolidate an advantage. Pack that with the gains in lap times that a slicker car concept would offer, and suddenly you could get a car that accelerates and brakes more quickly than the dominant team at the time, Ferrari, who supposedly had an engine advantage of around 50 horsepower over the Cosworth engine in the Tyrrell. That was all on paper, it’s worth mentioning.

It’s no surprise that this design had some flaws as well. First of all, it was more complicated and heavy, which proved to be an issue for transmitting the steering input to all four front wheels. Engineers managed to fix the issue with a comb drive, making the driver act solely on the first front axle, with a system of levers transmitting the rotation to the second front axle.

Oddly enough, balancing this complex system with a single stabilizer that acts on both axles did not cause any problems during the season, on the contrary, the brakes were the ones that gave the team massive headaches.

The unorthodox Formula 1 car actually managed to secure a one-two finish in the 1976 Swedish Grand Prix, with Jody Scheckter, the one that managed to bring the victory, condemning the six wheel concept and calling it a piece of junk, leaving the Tyrell Racing team for the next season. So, all in all there were some mixed results.

Tyrrell P34
Photo: Formula 1

Covini C6W

Of course, the thought of six wheels could not but catch up with the Italians, the uncontested masters of automotive design. Some say that the idea for creating a six-wheeled supercar came to Feruccio Covini after seeing the Tyrell P34 F1 car, wanting to bring a civilian version of it into the world.

Be that as it may, Covini has produced some extravagant cars along the way, but somewhat simpler from the technical point of view than a six-wheeler. He managed to bring forward a stunning supercar called the C6W, which had an Audi-built V8 engine delivering around 434 HP and 346 pound-feet, a 6-speed manual transmission, independent suspension for all six wheels, and a body made out of fiberglass and carbon fiber.

The car was a looker, managing to make the concept of four wheels steering (mounted in the front) look desirable, and the scissor doors helped as well.

Covini C6W
Photo: Covini

Panther 6

Many call this one the original extravagant six wheeled-supercar. The British-built exotic convertible was released in 1977 and was planned from the beginning for small scale production. The car charmed the public with excess in, well, everything. Under the hood, there was an 8.2-liter Cadillac V8 engine that produced an advertised power of 600 hp and an equally unproven 200 mph top speed (321 kph).

The extent of luxury for a late 1970s car included telephones for each door and a TV mounted directly to the dashboard. The price, well, that might be the reason there were only two units produced, as the car was more expensive than any Ferrari or Lamborghini at the time: around $52,000 – if you adjust the inflation to get a picture of how high this car was priced, you get $220,000.

Panther 6
Photo: Panther
While most of the multi axle wonders concepts never made it further than the drawing board, somehow there had been a few that slipped through the cracks and managed to become real things. Bizarre? Yes. Eccentric? Definitely. Successful? Well, it depends on how you define it.
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