Bless the pioneers and visionaries of the automotive industry. Thanks to them, our world is so much richer.

Charles F. Taylor (1916-1997) was no idle dreamer. An accomplished engineer, he worked for the Hathaway Instrument Company, International Harvester, and the Morse Chain division of BorgWarner, where he originated two patents for automatic transmissions. But from 1939 on, his personal sideline—his vision, if you will—was a novel concept for a one-wheeled vehicle. As Taylor saw it, there was terrain where two and four-wheeled vehicles were less than ideal, where a single-wheel machine would be more suited. And in his spare time he spent several decades exploring the configuration. (You can review a detailed academic paper on the Taylor-mobiles here. For a completely different approach to one-wheel transportation, see our item on the Dynasphere.)

The illustration above, which is more than worthy of the cover of Popular Science, showing Taylor with a fantastic single-wheeler truck, was reportedly prepared for an unsuccessful pitch to the U.S. military. However, the video below shows Taylor driving a pair of actual working prototypes, which were apparently developed between 1956 and 1965. The second of the two, dominated by a large agricultural tire and equipped with two Homelite two-stroke engines, one for propulsion and one to power a gyroscopic stabilizer, was capable of impressive speed, as we can see. By the way, the family has preserved parts of one machine, so maybe we haven’t seen the last of the idea. Video below.