It’s no secret that I have a mild-to-debilitating fetish for rear-engined cars. I don’t really have a logical explanation for this beyond a love for Volkswagen Beetles since childhood and perhaps the fact that, in that well-known but disturbingly reductive classification of attraction into two camps, I’m an ass man. Whatever the reason, I’ve always paid a lot of attention to rear-engined cars, and in my years of studying them, I’ve noticed something interesting: almost all makers of rear-engined passenger cars have at least toyed with the idea of making their cars into cab-forward, one(ish)-box almost-but-not-quite-van people movers.
It’s sort of a hard concept to get across, because so few of these vehicles ever actually made it to market. They’re sort of like vans, but not quite; they generally retain the lower height of a sedan, and are more passenger- than cargo-focused like a van. They also tend to be pretty bold styling-wise and take some real risks, as their fundamental proportions and shape is already pretty unusual. These also tend to be the sorts of cars that you’d associate with the future, but as the future was imagined in the past.
I think maybe the original template of this concept was the Stout Scarab of 1936:
The Scarab had a rear-mounted Ford V8 and an interior that was more like a little lounge area. It’s a one-box sort of design, but you wouldn’t really call it a van. Whatever it is, it seems to have established a sort of latent desire in car designers that worked for companies that made rear-engined cars. The pull of this type of car was a siren, and drew so many in.
Really, I think there was only one carmaker that was truly successful in pulling this off, at least in the sense I’m thinking of, adapting an existing rear-engined passenger car into one of the One Box Dreams: Fiat.
Fiat took their popular rear-engined 600, introduced in 1955, with a pretty conventional (for a rear-engined car) 2-box design, which looked like this:
…and adapted it, the very next year, 1956, into this incredible triumph of packaging, the Fiat 600 Multipla:
Look at that! On the same chassis as the 600, and with a rear end pretty damn close in design to the original, Fiat made a one-box design that was far roomier, with the front seats over the front wheels, and either one row and a lot of luggage room or two rows of seats and a bit less room for cargo, but with seating for six! Maybe 7 or 8 if you really cram!
Now, you may be wondering what the biggest maker of rear-engined cars, maybe ever, was doing on this front. Yes, I mean Volkswagen, makers of the iconic Beetle. If you need a reminder of how a Beetle was laid out, you’re in luck:
The Beetle was a 1938 design, and in some ways, you could argue that after the war, by 1950, Volkswagen did achieve the one-box rear-engined, driver’s-butt-over-the-front-wheels dream, in the form of the Type 2 Transporter, better known as the Microbus:
You can see the microbus cutaway along with a cutaway of the Stout Scarab (lower left) and Buckminister Fuller’s Dymaxion car (lower right, but really probably even too weird to be in this category) so you can see the similarities. But even if it is similar, I don’t think the Microbus counts: it was too much of a van, and conceptually it’s not the same as the One Box Passenger Dream car. The height is a factor, but more so is the intent, which is just different; where a van is more practical, this one-box thing is more futuristic, more, I don’t know, utopian.
Now, Volkswagen did have a plan for this sort of vehicle other than the Microbus; it was a VW/Porsche joint design study called the Type 700. Here it is compared to the three-row Fiat Multipla:
Look at that thing! It’s a textbook rear-engine one-box dream car. Aside from drawings and models, it looks like one full-size body was completed as well:
Personally, I kind of love it. It was described as a VW for “large families” but VW had a car for that demographic: the Microbus. Still, this did have a very different design, much less van-like and much more delightfully strange.
As you can see, this thing could have been oddly stylish, almost like if there was a Type 2 Karmann-Ghia, like a sporty version of the bus. I especially like the winged VW logo.
I actually started thinking about all of this when I happened onto a new one of these types of cars I wasn’t aware of before; it seems that even Tatra, the legendary Czech maker of huge, rear-engined luxury cars for high-ranking Communists, had plans for a one-box version of their Tatra 603.
The 603 was much bigger than most of the other cars we’ve been looking at, with a big air-cooled V8 at the rear. Still, despite the change in scale, the 603 had a very similar layout to its rear-engined cousins.
Once, I even got to spend some quality time with a Tatra 603:
Here’s what the design study for what was known as the Tatra 707 looked like:
Wow! In case the Tatra 603 wasn’t bonkers enough, it’s nice to know Tatra would have had it covered. I also just realized this is a six-door design! Here’s how the 603’s layout would have been adapted:
The drawing shows what looks like two rows of seats with a third row folded up behind the second row. There’s a massive cargo area behind the seats, and I think even with the third row up, there would still be a pretty commodious luggage area.
I saved this last one, from former rear-engine advocate Renault, for last because it’s sort of the strangest. Where all of these other versions have been one-box designs, the Renault one, based on the rear-engined Renault Dauphine, was a two-box design, just oddly reversed. Here, look:
Both of those cars are facing the same way, by the way. Right. The lower car, 1959’s Renault Projet 900, looks like a sort of small station wagon if you just reverse the front and rear. It’s a cab-forward design still, with the front seat over the front axle, but instead of a box design it retains a separate hood for the engine, like a small station wagon, just at the rear.
This design feels much more like change for the sake of change as opposed to actually solving a problem; are you getting any more room this way? I don’t think so. I think you’re getting more rear legroom at the expense of cargo area? It’s deeply strange, but I think it still deserves to be in this category.
As I said, hardly any production cars fit into this class. The future, though, might bring a comeback of this design concept, especially for electric, automated vehicles. Especially ride-share vehicles that prioritize passenger moving over almost everything else. Look at the vehicles from Zoox, for example:
That’s a one-box design, but not exactly a van, just like these other ones. With small electric motors on one or more axles and no actual driver, it is a sort of departure, but I think these still count as descendants of the Scarab and Multipla et al.
I hope we do see more of these futuristic weirdos in the future; they’ve earned their time in the sun.
I’m still waiting for my (full sized) Freeman Intercity Commuter
The Zoox Robotaxi looks like it should be drawn by horses with footmen riding on the back. I think King Charles has a couple.
Slightly off topic but I’d love to see a Tesla reimagined with styling by Tatar’s designers.
I was not aware Czech’s drove w/ high heels on…
High heels are not only for capitalist pigs!
Yup!
What makes a minivan? I’ve defined the recipe as;
1. A one- or “one-and-a-half”-box vehicle, with
2. Tall height plus low floor enabled by;
3. Unit construction and the powertrain concentrated at one end (the front as it turns out),
4. A large cargo-loading door on the back and at least one extralarge (preferably but not necessarily sliding) door for cargo and passengers on the curb side (modern ones have them on both but that was a later innovation)
5. Designed primarily as a family passenger vehicle, not a cargo van with a “minibus” line extension or a purpose-built taxi.
The one-box as much as it seems to be an automotive mullet to us (van in front, sedan in back) was an important step as it introduced Point #5. Both the progenitor Stout Scarab and most-produced Fiat Multipla were marketed as private vehicles. The rear engine got in the way of #4 and created a mental block it took decades to get past without falling into Point 5a.
In the end, the proliferation of front-wheel-drive made the back-hatchless mullet car a moot point. Without that pesky rear engine there’s simply no point in a one- or two-box vehicle without a hatchback (please broadcast this to any companies now building their remaining sedans as fastbacks with cat-flap trunk lids). The same goes if there’s an electric motor in back, even less of a challenge to work around than VW’s pancake engine if not as easy as having nothing back there but a dead beam axle.
In the US in the 21st century, “minivan” refers to a pretty narrow definition: a midsize van-type vehicle built from a compact-to-midsize unibody FWD sedan. K-car => Chrysler van, Accord => Odyssey, Camry => Sienna.
This is a category of vehicle innovated in, and mostly sold in, the North American market. The term ‘minivan’ is also primarily a North American usage.
Should all other types of mini vans, more common outside the US, be called by the more common MPV name to distinguish from the narrow and rigid category of vehicle called a minivan? Larger ones are often called a minibus.
Will someone please buy this before I end in big trouble
https://www.carandclassic.com/auctions/1957-tatra-603-8W6rX4
There is a lot of talk about gigacasting lately. The one box design would be an ideal candidate. Using the same gigacasting for both the front and the rear with a structural battery pack in the center could really simplify and cut costs in their production. It could be like the Citroën Relay Van where you just by the front end and you get to deck out the rest the way you want. Or it could be like the Zoom RoboTaxi where you just sandwich a battery pack together and bolt it up.
I don’t see vans or trucks in those examples more wagons and sedans. But rear engine means awkward cargo loading for trucks or loud and vibration for humans, all with the front death zone for the driver, who is always in the vehicle and a difficult cooling system. I mean VW had issues with the tiny no frills Beetle can you imagine trying to cool a 3/4 ton dually? It’s a just a different way to do something in a poorer design.
Did VW have cooling issues with the Beetle? I don’t know that they’re any more prone to overheating than other underpowered and janky 50s cars, which is to say, pretty prone to overheating. Porsche manages to make rear engines work just fine.
There are some big issues with a rear engine, but also some still-compelling packaging and weight balance advantages.
Having known some folks with a type 2 bus and a vanagon, the bus would do just fine in swampy ass indiana summers buzzing along.
Where to the vanagon in air cooled guise, would get grumpy at times trying to keep up on highways or the hills in the same season.
The extra weight they had didnt help that pokey lil motor
Don’t forget Canoo, their’s is a one box design too
Edit: Late to the party…….already mentioned below……
Tatra 707! I wish Tatra survived to the present day.
What about the Isata in its various forms?
Even though it’s marketed as a van, I think the pill-shaped Canoo vehicles (all dozen or so they’ve actually built) fit this concept pretty nicely, even down to the scarab-style club seating option.
Only the VW T1, T2 and T3 really pulled it off for the masses for years, all the others were kind of one hit wonders. But great article, JT!
By the way I just got myself another almost classic VW T4 (Eurovan): Just drives so great (and fast) compared to the old ones 🙂
https://www.instagram.com/p/C6b8sQfCvXh/
Back in ancient times, all of 10 years ago, I remember all sorts of concept electric cars, based on the idea of four motors for four wheels, with all being controlled from a electric box — some wirelessly and some with cables.
Meant any shape at all was possible, as long as it could hold batteries and did not slice pedestrians in half.
And what do we get?
Boring SUVs weighing 2.5 tonnes, which cannot even tow because the designers have never towed anything in their lives, and because even a small trailer will tip the scales into HGV land.
But guess what — you can wirelessly link your telephone!
No isetta on the list? Especially the 600 would fit in pretty well on the small end of this list I would think
If you include the 600 — I’m a definite “yes” on that, then why not the Zundapp Janus?
awesome space utilization though. still beyond ugly
ugly times ugly times ugly times ugly still equals ugly. ugly+ugly+ugly=ugly. Do the math still equals ugly
rear engines mentioned
here for the butt stuff
did you say butt stuff? grab the lube and rubbers and call me!! ha ha, just kidding. I just got your hopes up like a Spyder hood decal on a 77 Monza hatchback
oh man, don’t get VW people going on the cork vs. rubber gasket conversation
Or perhaps they realized that a teardrop is the optimal aerodynamic shape…
It’s also the shape most Audi owners are familiar with when they get the bill 🙂
Jason, I was really enjoying reading this and the build up thinking oh he’s saving the best for last. He’s really going to have a wonderful ending with the Corvair Futura. Oh look it’s the penultimate Tatra, and here comes the…
What!!!
To paraphrase Johnny Rotten: No Futura? No Futura for you?
Jeez
Well here you go
https://mariothemultipla.wordpress.com/2016/07/22/weird-wonderful-no-1-chevrolet-corvair-future-concept/
I couldn’t believe Torch missed the absolute best design meeting his criteria. The Futura is the retro-futuristic (even in its name) Corvair Brubox! Then I read your article and it says it was not an actual GM creation. 🙁
See also the 1957 Ford Nucleon.
Probably the most extreme example.
Stout Scarab is still the best. Keeping the wheels pushed out to the corners makes the most sense for handling, packaging, and safety.
I’ve had three rear engine vehicles…VW..Multipla..Ultra Coach RV. (Mine wasn’t Corvair powered, it was one of the last and powered by a 307 Chevrolet engine)
That Renault really messes with me. It’s like that guy with the backwards pickup.
I like to imagine they tested it in a tiny French village and shelved it after causing panic in the streets.
Or the car with 2 fronts welded together to mess with a parking attendant on YT.
A guy in Buffalo welded together two Dodge Caravan front ends. Each with a functional engine and steering, IIRC. This was decades ago. It’s about the most Buffalo thing ever made, including the Buffalo wing.
Maybe it was an homage to that then. But I think this was just to get clicks, they probably weren’t even cognizant.
i saw a double Citation locally for years. A bit off as he had to pitch it up at the seam in the middle in order to fit the mufflers. Parking was fairly easy at least as both ends worked. They pulled off an old pickup truck gas tank between the seat backs.
That’s….. pretty neat!
This is the video I was remembering, the car choice is pretty ubiquitous.
https://youtu.be/BZjd8zREhhY?si=2IgOACkwR3BWZYDD
The crab walking parallel park is cool
Mercedes has a recent appropriate article as well….
https://www.theautopian.com/this-carmaker-sells-vans-with-two-front-ends-heres-what-theyre-for/
Crumple zones really put a limit on how far forward you can put the driver these days, but I hope we get a lot of packaging innovations in the EV era. So far most automakers aren’t even trying…
A false cab-over front with a huge frunk
Right and I sure hope so (the Buzz hasn’t really done it, I don’t know about others), but it still means the total vehicle length will be much larger than for these older efficient packaging designs.
I think, maybe, the VW Transporter set passenger expectations a on a firm path toward the van form factor and away from the one box sedan. If you didn’t like vans, there was still the station wagon for low roof patrons. Minivans eventually drove the van trend so far forward they basically killed station wagons with the three row SUV being the figurative final nail. Gotta say, some of those pioneering designs were very cool, even if they did look like they belonged whizzing through underground passages in some great subterranean city of the apocalyptic future.