Star Warsian Retro Vehicles

Posted by Joel Johnson, April 12, 2008 6:26 AM | permalink

If I'm parsing this Spiegel article correctly, they're comparing this collection of 39 strange vehicles as things that look like they could have come out of Star Wars. Ironically, some of the featured retro vehicles are war machines, including some hard-edged German items, which undoubtedly affected the visual style of some of the original trilogy's design. Or maybe they're saying these things inspired Star Wars in the first place. I can suss out the meaning of words in German, but all the connective grammar is lost on me.

Die Ahnen von Star Wars [Spiegel.de] (Thanks, Monad!)

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Discussion

Take a look at this

#1 posted by hanswurst0815 , April 12, 2008 9:22 AM

The headline is a little bit misleading - it refers to all of the vehicles as "Star Wars' ancestors", but the descriptions under the images only suggest that two of them look "like Star Wars": this one http://einestages.spiegel.de/external/ShowTopicAlbumBackground/a1771/l3/l0/F.html#featuredEntry and this one http://einestages.spiegel.de/external/ShowTopicAlbumBackground/a1771/l27/l0/F.html#featuredEntry ("At least the spectacular design has influencend the fantasy vehicles from 'Star Wars'").

Another one http://einestages.spiegel.de/external/ShowTopicAlbumBackground/a1771/l12/l0/F.html#featuredEntry is described as looking like a car from Gotham City, and then there's one http://einestages.spiegel.de/external/ShowTopicAlbumBackground/a1771/l37/l0/F.html#featuredEntry that is connected with a story by H. G. Wells.

Take a look at this

#2 posted by Anonymous , April 14, 2008 4:59 AM

The pictured car is on display in Stuttgart at the Mercedes Benz museum. It was designed by Ferdinand Porsche. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_T80

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#3 posted by Anonymous , April 14, 2008 8:36 AM

Hmmm, there's some goliaths, a lot of monocycles (at least one of which appears to have no anti-gerbilling features at all - don't expect to stop when you hit the brakes), the ball tank, and "Der Land-Wasser-Schlepper" for amphibious invasion of Britain.

Yes! Number 15 is Christie's "flying tank"!! Awesomeness!

And there's four shots of REAL RAIL GUNS (not induction blunderbusses or those silly spark gap contraptions the kiddies call rail guns nowadays). I'd love to know their names... the third one might be Schlank Emma!

Thanks for the link, that was some excellent retro war tech there.

--Charlie