Muppet Train Keeps Rolling With Le Maximum: Cold Start

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Yes, that’s right, I read your comments and I heard you, so we’re wrapping up the week with more Muppet car stuff. You don’t have to twist my arm, which is ironic, because watching those foam-filled Muppet arms get all twisted around like fat udon noodles is always hilarious. Today I’m going to change it up in two ways: I’m going to leave those twin comfort zones of ’70s and ’80s era Muppetry and existing, real-world-identifiable cars and instead we’re going to talk about a more recent Muppet venture (well, only one decade old) and a car that never technically existed in the real world. The movie is 2014’s The Muppets Most Wanted and the car is known as Le Maximum.

The Le Maximum was built specifically for the movie, mostly as a way to get some gags out of the bird-out-of-air subplot of the very, intensely, clinically American Sam the Eagle being stuck in Europe, and really milking all of those European stereotypes, such as the predilection for tiny cars. I suppose the fillmakers didn’t think any of the many, many European microcars was exactly right, because they eventually made their own, and gave it the ironic name “Le Maximum.”

The name is sort of explained in the scene where its introduced:

I mean, I get it, the size is positively decadent. Who needs all that vastness, really? It’s downright showy.

Looking at Le Maximum, I think the designers did a pretty great job making a sort of composite microcar. In looking at it, I see two primary influences:

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I see Scootacar in the main body design and proportions, and a lot of exaggerated Mini in the front end.

I like how they gave it a face that’s less cute and more unhinged, like a tiny rabid badger or something like that. The face seems to be glowering a bit, determined  and focused, and then its attached to that gumdrop body.

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It’s fun and ridiculous and accomplishes its task perfectly. It’s also not some CG phantom; this is a real, functional vehicle, and, even more incredibly, was 3D-printed.

There’s a whole article about it here; it was built on a golf cart chassis, the body panels were all 3D printed, and what’s really incredible is that it fits not just a full-grown human adult, but two, one of whom is puppeteering the full-grown adult Muppet in there as well. You can see some of the cramped and clever packaging in these 3D wireframes:

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Look at that! I love that it’s actually drivable, too.

That article noted that the original design inspiration was an unnamed Russian car, and if I had to guess what they were looking at initially, I bet it was one of these SMZ “invalid” cars, made for disabled war veterans:

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I mean, I can’t prove this, but it’s just a hunch I have.

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I think what they ended up with works better for the role, anyway. The car itself is sort of like a drivable Muppet; in the same way Kermit is a strangely stylized amphibian, this is a strangely stylized microcar, and it’s controllable and steerable by a person. A puppeteer, if you will. Are we not all puppeteering our cars as we drive?

Oh man, that’s deep.

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Mercedes Streeter

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28 thoughts on “Muppet Train Keeps Rolling With Le Maximum: Cold Start”

  2. Holy Crap. Forgot all about the movie and the tiny car. Still can’t believe they stuffed a human and a Muppet in that thing.

    Thanks Torch.

  3. THIS is what the Autopia cars should be – sans exhaust.
    Batteries included.

    Unless you’re a Bear.
    Then your natural habitat is a Studebaker.

  5. There is a car (no idea of make) that looks very close to this that I see often in China. They look to be several decades old and they have a single seat. Same puff of exhaust coming from the tailpipe too.

  6. It’s a dumb joke, but it’s such a perfectly executed dumb joke that you can’t help but love it. As it always should be with the Muppets.

  8. I vaguely remember seeing this movie when it came out, and I probably just accepted that Le Maximum was real, since it’s plausibly designed. Sam’s voice isn’t sitting with me, though; I remember him a lot more grim and less Fozzy-sounding.

  9. Amazing how many people were so moved by a little felt, foam rubber and feathers. I’m old enough to recall watching Wilkins Coffee commercials featuring Wilkins and Wontkins and lots of period typical violence. Good times, and this has been a fun week.

  12. “You can see some of the cramped and clever packaging in these 3D wireframes”
    The 3D wireframe showing the knees-up driving position is reminiscient of Road and Track magazine’s April Fools-esque Cyclops II, from 1957, which had a knees-up driving position, just even more egregious:
    https://www.conceptcarz.com/images/Cyclops/57-Cyclops-II_DV-12-AI-a03.jpg
    The Lane Motor Museum has a replica:
    https://www.lanemotormuseum.org/collection/cars/item/cyclops-two-replica-1957/

    3. I have a tendency at car shows/cars and coffee/etc. to end up parked next to something that completely overshadows whatever I brought; this was never more true when a Cyclops II parked next to my Corvair at a Concours d’LeMons. But it was so cool, I couldn’t be mad about it.

  16. Are we not all puppeteering our cars as we drive?

    Indeed we are.

    “I work my whole life, I don’t apologize, to take care of my family. And I refused to be a fool dancing on the strings held by all of those big shots. That’s my life, I don’t apologize for that. But I always thought that when it was your time, that you would be the one to hold the strings.”

  17. This was satisfying. Thank you for scratching that Muppety itch so many of us have.

    I’ll be watching videos of Muppet songs between meetings if you need me. If I get to Halfway Down The Stairs, I’m afraid I will not be doing a whole lot more past it.

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