Cars Should Not Be Allowed to Reproduce

How this happened

I own a camera that costs more than my first car. More than my first two cars, honestly. And this week I took everything that camera taught me — medium format, 110mm wide open at f2, the exact way a background melts when you pan with something fast — and used it to make a Smart ForTwo pregnant with a Ferrari.

Not with the camera. Midjourney did the dirty work. I only wrote the prompts. But every image in this series is shot — let's say shot — in the style of a Fujifilm GFX at 110mm f2, widescreen, heavy motion blur, the full car commercial treatment. You know the ad. A wet tunnel. Rim light. A man in a turtleneck whispers one word and then nothing for thirty seconds.

Except in my version the car is a Fiat Multipla that went to the gym. Twenty-five of them so far. Nobody asked for this. I did it anyway.

Meet the family

The Ferrari Enzino.

Smart ForTwo meets Enzo. Scissor doors on a car you can park sideways. It is 2.7 meters long and two of those meters are rear diffuser. Monaco has never been so confused.

The Lamborobin.

A Reliant Robin with a Countach wedge on top. Still three wheels. Still falls over in corners. But now it falls over at 300 km/h and looks fantastic doing it.

The Deux Chiron.

Corrugated 2CV hood, horseshoe grille, quad turbo. The French farmer who ordered it wanted to carry eggs across a ploughed field without breaking them. He can now do that in 2.4 seconds. The eggs are not fine.

The Phantomini.

A classic Mini with a Rolls-Royce grille so tall the driver has to stand up to see over it. Rear-hinged doors. Room for one chauffeur and absolutely nobody to chauffeur.

The Viprius.

Toyota Prius, Dodge Viper hood. The burnout photo is my favourite of the whole series. Somewhere a Prius owner is smiling for the first time in his life.

The 0.7 Series.

A Peel P50 wearing the grille of a BMW 7 Series. Which means the grille is the car. There is no car. It is a glowing kidney on three wheels and it is the most honest BMW ever built.

The Schoolby Cobra.

A yellow school bus with a Shelby hood, side pipes and racing stripes. Forty-eight kids. Zero seatbelts. One very long hood. Field trip to Route 66 is now a lap time.

The Volvo F240.

Boxy Swedish wagon, F40 wing, NACA ducts, pop-up lights. The safest car in the world, drifting sideways down a mountain. My father-in-law would buy this immediately and never take it above 90.

The Trans Farm.

A green tractor in black and gold with a firebird on the hood and a T-top roof, jumping a broken bridge with the sheriff behind it. It is still pulling the plough. That is the detail I'm proudest of.

The HummBug.

A Beetle shell stretched over a Hummer chassis. From far away it looks like a VW. From close up it looks like a VW that has been to war and doesn't want to talk about it.

The McModel T.

Brass-era Ford cabin, McLaren P1 body, dihedral doors. Henry Ford said any colour as long as it's black. This one is papaya and does 350.

The Aventabus.

A split-window Microbus with scissor doors and Y-shaped headlights. The hippies finally got their revolution. It took 740 horsepower.

The DeLoreanino.

A Fiat 500 in brushed stainless steel with gullwing doors. Roads? Where it's going it doesn't need roads. Also it doesn't need a parking space, it fits in a shopping cart bay.

The Jeepsetta.

A BMW Isetta on mud tires, seven-slot grille, roll bars. Still has the single front door. Which means if you nose into a ditch, you live in the ditch now.

The Ladagani.

Soviet Lada sedan, Italian hypercar carbon, four exhausts in the centre of the tail. Built by hand. Probably still needs a new starter every winter.

The Aston Aztek.

The ugliest crossover of the 2000s in a silver tuxedo, chasing someone over a Swiss pass. Shaken, not stirred, not attractive.

The Tatallac.

A Tata Nano wearing 1959 tail fins in bubblegum pink. The fins are taller than the car. In a crosswind it becomes a sailboat.

The Twizyegg.

Renault Twizy with a Swedish megacar's wing and dihedral doors. A shopping trolley with a top speed. I respect it deeply.

Midjourney is a snob

Four of the first ten failed. Not ugly failed — worse. Perfect failed. I asked for the Mercedes Multipla and got a beautiful, flawless G-Wagon. Not one bug eye. Not one gram of Fiat. As if the Multipla had walked into the room, seen the G-Wagon and quietly left through the back door.

Same story three more times. The Trabipunk came out as a plain Cybertruck. The Bugatti swallowed its 2CV whole. The Nissan Cube showed up alone to its own wedding with Porsche. Every time, the famous one won and the weird one vanished.

The fix is almost insulting in how simple it is. You stop saying the famous name. You name the underdog — Multipla, Trabant, 2CV — and you describe the celebrity only by its parts. Slab panels. Exposed hinges. Horseshoe grille. Midjourney can't fall in love with a list of hinges. All four got their second chance with exactly that recipe — including the Nissan, now the Porsche 911 Cubed. The Trabipunk gets stainless steel, a triangle roof, little chrome bumpers and two-tone pastel. It looks like it wants to overthrow a government but needs to be home by eight.

The movie stars

Round three went to the cinema. The Trans Farm you already met. Here are the others.

The 406 Heures du Mans.

The white Marseille taxi with a Le Mans wing and a shark fin. The meter runs at 300 km/h. So does your bill.

The Subarus.

The bus that couldn't drop below 50, now in rally blue with gold wheels and a hood scoop, flying over the freeway gap. Honestly the most believable image in the series.

The Monster Minis.

Red, white and blue, on monster truck tires, bouncing down the church steps of Turin. The pigeons did not consent.

The Mustape.

A Piaggio Ape in Highland Green fastback, airborne over a San Francisco hill. Handlebar steering. Hubcaps everywhere. Steve would be proud. Steve would also be very confused.

I spend a lot of time telling people that gear doesn't matter. That light matters, and patience, and being there at six in the morning when the fog is still sitting on the Neckar. I stand by that. But I will also admit that 110mm at f2 makes a tractor in a firebird costume look like it deserves a Super Bowl slot.

Which one should get a real print? Tell me. I am leaning Trans Farm.