Welcome to Concept Car Face-Off, where we pit two ridiculous vehicles that had a snowball’s chance of being built to find out which one reigns supreme. In this installment, the twin-HEMI Jeep Hurricane with four-wheel steering and the Sbarro Monster G, complete with wheels pulled off a Boeing 747.
The Hurricane was the toast of the 2005 Detroit Auto Show, with its one-piece carbon fiber body molded over an aluminum frame, no doors, and enough badass to blow Dr. Z’s mustache sideways.
But the real party pieces were the two 5.7-liter HEMI V8s, totally 670 HP and 740 lb-ft of torque. Each engine drove one set of wheels, which could steer independently, allowing the Hurricane’s wheels to either twist the opposite direction of each other for tight turns or together to crab-steer sideways.
It was amazing and outrageous and despite accolades and a raft of patents, it never made it off the show stand.
Nearly two decades earlier in Geneva, Sbarro decided to got nutty with the Monster G, a Range Rover with a body of kevlar and the same no-doors-all-fun design brief.
It wasn’t nearly as technically advanced as the Hurricane, with its 6.4-liter, 350-HP V8 pulled from Mercedes, but it made up for its lack of technical prowess with brute force insanity, including a set of 20x16-inch wheels donated from a Boeing 747 and a minibike mounted in the trunk.
So, for sheer lunacy and unbridled engineering optimism, which one gets made and which one collects dust in some random dank basement?
Contact the author at damon@jalopnik.com.
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