I’m not sure which car is the biggest. As far as which is the longest car in the world, the record belongs to this unique creature:
A 30.5 m (100 ft) long 26-wheeled limousine was designed by Jay Ohrberg of Burbank, California, USA. It has many features, including a swimming pool with diving board and a king-sized water bed. It is designed to drive as a rigid vehicle or it can be changed to bend in the middle. Its purpose was for use in films and displays.
The American Dream began life in the late 1980s at Ohrberg’s Hollywood Cars shop. Ohrberg selected a golden 1970s Cadillac Eldorado as a starting point, and his team set about slicing up the land yacht… and developing that concept to the nth degree. 100 feet and 26 wheels later, the American Dream was complete, featuring the aforementioned jacuzzi and helicopter pad, as well as a small lace and candelabra-festooned living room and two separate driver’s cabins.
The limousine could be driven in its straight-as-an-arrow state, or reset to bend in the middle. The separate driver’s cabin was rather necessary in order to negotiate any turn, and the ‘backseat driver’ would steer the rear axles. Expectedly, this movie car and display vehicle was not road legal, and period photos show that the American Dream was detachable in the midsection and could be trailered on flatbed trucks from location to location.
But its ‘longest car in the world’ claim to fame apparently couldn’t save it from an eventual demise. The American Dream was leased to a company which used it as a promotional vehicle, and upon the end of the lease, its caretakers abandoned it in a New Jersey warehouse. The car resurfaced in 2012 at a salvage auction needing major repairs - damage to the body, tears in the roof, broken windows, and a rusty jacuzzi - it didn’t look promising.
However, the story has taken a positive turn. In 2014, New York’s Autoseum Automotive Teaching Museum announced that the American Dream limousine had been acquired and will now be used to help teach students to fix, build and fabricate cars. Given its sheer size though, this restoration project may take some time.
Question: “What was the biggest car ever made?”
Let me show you Ettore Bugatti’s French Type 41 Bugatti Royale.
This car had a wheelbase of 169 inches and a length of 252 inches. In comparison the truck-like Cadillac Escalade is a small car having a wheelbase of ONLY 116 inches and a length ONLY 204 inches long. The Bugatti Royale is FOUR FEET LONGER and has a wheelbase which is MORE THAN FOUR FEET LONGER than an Escalade!
This car was impressive!
The engine for the Royale, a beautifully machined engine turned straight-8, displaced more than 12.7 liters or 779 cubic inches, more than twice the size of the Cadillac Escalade’s V-8. ONE CYLINDER of the Bugatti Royale’s straight-8 had a displacement bigger than the ENTIRE ENGINE in a BMW Mini, Honda Civic, or Toyota Yaris! Moreover, the Royale had an overhead cam design and three-valves per cylinder and was based upon the design of a French aircraft engine.
Bugatti engines eliminated the problem of head gasket failure by simply eliminating the head gasket. The block and cylinder head of the big straight-8 were cast in one piece. This, however, created its own problems. In the 1930’s the valves and valve seats of an engine had to be ground and lapped on a yearly basis. As the cylinder head of the Royale, or any Bugatti for that matter, could not be removed, that required the engine to be removed from the chassis every time the valves were ground.
Bugatti originally intended to build 25 Royales and sell them to European Royalty. However, the economic depression of the 1930’s intervened, and only seven Royales were ever built, three were sold, and one was destroyed. None were in fact ever sold to royals. And Ettore Bugatti notably REFUSED to sell one of the cars to King Zog of Albania because “the man’s table manners are beyond belief!”. God I like the French! Ettore Bugatti would NOT have sold a car to Donald Trump! Ettore Bugatti had integrity and style.
An engine extremely similar to that of the Bugatti Royale, again a 24-valve, overhead cam, 12.7 liter straight-8 was used by the Bugatti Company to power a series of gasoline powered French railcars. Two or four of these engines were used in each of these for this purpose.
Interestingly, Bugatti is best known for extremely fast, light weight, and very roadable sports cars such as the Type 35
or the lovely Type 57.
And the Bugatti Royale, despite its size and weight, was designed to be driven fast and was said to have handled like a sports car. The Bugatti Royale is undoubtedly the biggest fine car ever built.
P.S. It should be noted that the current car using the Bugatti nameplate is a Volkswagen and has no relationship to the legendary Bugatti other than having purchased the name.
The biggest car ever made was the “Antarctic Snow Cruiser” of the 1930’s.
While there were all sorts of notions of how this huge car was going to drive across Antarctica and even serve as an aircraft carrier of sorts, in fact it was disastrously poorly engineered and underpowered (150hp total) and featured huge treadless tires that simply spun on the antarctic ice, giving no traction.
