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.