The mantis is surely one of Nature’s weirdest creations. Only not terrifying because they’re pretty small, if you saw a picture of one with no concept of scale you’d undoubtedly flee to the hills convinced mankind was about to be enslaved by a superior alien race.
Car makers love naming their vehicles after odd animals though, and the mantis is no exception, being used on Marcos’s early-’70s sports car that looked every bit as horrific as the insect which gave its name.
Fortunately their mid-’90s sequel was – if still not brilliant – far more palatable, but neither were as good to look at as this concept supercar from Flickr’s R. Skittle. Suggested to us by a reader, Skittle’s ‘Koncept Mantis’ is an interesting looking thing, with a full remote control drivetrain hidden under the unusual bodywork.
A pair of Power Functions motors drive the rear wheels whilst another controls the steering, there’s clever pushrod suspension, and an even cleverer automatically deploying airbrake that raises when the car ‘brakes’.
There’s much more to see of R. Skittle’s ‘Mantis’ Technic supercar on Flickr – click here to see the complete gallery and a video of the car in action.
