Just before the beginning of WWII, the de Havilland aircraft company proposed to the Air Ministry that they build a bomber that was so fast it would not need any defensive armament. The Ministry turned it down, believing the idea to be impossible, but de Havilland went ahead and built the plane anyway - almost entirely out of wood!

The result was the Mosquito, a plane that exceeded all of its intended limits and went on to be one of the best aircraft of the war. It was so fast and light that it was used in all sorts of roles - all because of the strength and light weight of the wood it was built from. The lesson must surely be: don’t knock wood!

And it seems the same applies in car design. A furniture maker with the unlikely name of Friend Wood has built a three wheeled car with a wooden body. Using mechanicals and 602cc engine from a Citroen 2CV, the car has a top speed of over 100 mph and returns a fuel consumption of between 55 and 70 mpg. That’s not bad by any standards.

The car has been named the Tryane II and, although the body makes no secret of its wooden construction, it is well streamlined and quite pretty. Mind you, I’m not sure how it would fare in an accident - imagine all those splinters flying about…

I never liked Cadillacs until I came to the States. That event coincided with some of the best cars ever made by Cadillac - it was as though they put on a special effort just for me. And I am a complete convert; in my opinion, Cadillacs are now the best looking and most desirable of all American cars.

The Cadillac Sixteen, a design exercise from 2003, is the essence of all that has been good about Caddies ever since. Styling features have influenced later models and the car itself, with its 14.6 liter 16 cylinder engine, is the perfect combination of sports and luxury. It looks a brute and, thankfully, it is. No wonder Cadillacs today are serious contenders for the motorist’s checkbook.

Here’s what Top Gear had to say about the Sixteen when they tried it (lucky blighters).

Warwick University’s Eco One

The WMG students at Warwick University have designed and built one of the greenest cars on earth, the Eco One - and it’s made from potatoes and cashew nuts, amongst other exotic materials. Amazingly, it’s a racing car capable of 150 mph and runs on bio-fuels.

The ultimate aim of the students’ project is to build a car that is ninety-five percent bio-degradable or recyclable. The Eco One is just the beginning, it seems. But it does show what is already possible in this field of research and points the way for manufacturers of green cars in the future.

The Eco One will debut at the Sexy Green Car Show at the Eden Project between March 30 and April 15, where it will stand alongside the offerings of some of the largest car manufacturers in the world. To learn more, visit the Warwick University site or read PitPass’ article giving the racing view of the project.

Many years ago I saw a TV program that included automotive design exercises by young Japanese employees of car manufacturers. There were some fascinating ideas on display but the one that caught my eye was the single-wheel vehicle. Not a motorized unicycle, you understand, no, a much cleverer idea that seated the driver inside the wheel.

Whether it should be termed a car or a motorbike is open to debate but it seemed a suitably dreamlike subject for this blog. I searched the net for anything on the design and came up with a car in India that was at drawing board stage only, a few pictures of unicycles, but nothing resembling what I remembered or even using the same idea.

Then I thought that it might be described as a motorbike and tried that. Bingo! Not the design I had seen but the identical idea actually put into practice; in fact, a brief movie of some guy demonstrating the contraption. The machine is more obviously a motorbike than the Japanese version but it is just as pretty a concept and, wonder of wonders, it works!

You can see the thing in action by clicking on this link. It looks highly dangerous when moving but what really worries me is what happens when it stops. If I remember correctly, the Japanese design had some sort of arrangement to prevent it tipping over at rest but I can see nothing similar on this one. Perhaps the idea is to wait until nearly at a full stop, then leap off and run for your life!

Obviously, this idea is not entirely practical - the wheel gets in the way of your forward vision for a start - but, being the sucker for clever ideas that I am, I just had to show it to you.