Everyone knows that great GT racer of the sixties, the Ford GT40. But does anyone remember the car that made it possible, the Lola Mk VI, or GT as it was more commonly named?

In the early years of that decade, makers of GT racers were slow to follow Formula 1 in designing mid-engined cars and Eric Broadley, founder of Lola Cars, decided to give it a try. The result was the Lola GT, the car that caught everyone by surprise in 1963. It was so good-looking and promised great performance too.

Lola entered it late for Le Mans that year and their rushed preparation meant that it failed to make the distance, although it was running amongst the leaders when it broke. The potential was obvious and we looked forward to the car challenging and perhaps beating the dominant Ferraris.

But it was not to be. Ford wanted to have a go at Le Mans and were working on a mid-engined design; but, when they saw the Lola, they dropped everything, bought the car and the services of its designer. Out of that deal came the Ford GT Mk I, a car that owed much to Broadley’s Lola GT. And the Mk I evolved into the GT40, of course.

So we never found out how good a racer the Lola would turn out to be. But it remains one of the prettiest cars ever to see the light of day!

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.

One of the most famous car designers of the twentieth century, Giorgetto Giugiaro began by working for Bertone but soon left to set up his own design studios, Ital Design. In the seventies his work became instantly recognizable and he was the main force behind the straight edges and clean lines of that decade. You may not know his name but he was responsible for such cars as the Lotus Esprit, the Volkswagen Passat of 1973, most of the modern Daewoos, and the Maseratis too.

Unlike many Italian car designers, Giugiaro has branched out into all types of industrial design and it is worth taking a wander around the Ital Design website to see which designs you recognize.

But to understand just how good a designer he is, we should have a look at one of latest designs; and what better than the car he took on as a project for his own enjoyment, the Ferrari GG50. Feast your eyes on this gorgeous beastie:

Early in one of my other blogs, Formula 1 Latest, I posted about the Italian ATS team that attempted racing in F1 in 1963. That attempt ended in complete failure but was caused partly by the brand new company trying to do too much, too soon. In addition to running the F1 team, they designed and built one of the prettiest GT cars ever to see the light of day, the 2500 GT.

In fact, the car was not just pretty. It was one of the first production cars to put the engine behind the driver and ahead of the rear wheels - what became known as mid-engined. And the 2.5 liter V8 engine was designed by Carlo Chiti, who had been one of Ferrari’s top engineers. The ATS V8 was acknowledged to be a fine engine, one of the best products of Italian design at the time.

So it is a great shame that only twelve 2500 GTs were made; the company disintegrated as promised financing failed to appear and everything fell apart before the end of the year. Yet the car itself continues to be one of the most desirable classics of all time and deservedly so, I think.