TEI #020 - Solved. Town Sedan concept by Eric J. Roberts, c. 1966.

[Tom_I]

No, but as with "compact", you are in the right sort of area.

[Wendax]

Town Sedan?

[Allemano]

Town Limousine?

[pnegyesi]

Town coach?

[Tom_I]

Wendax has it! The designer called this car a Town Sedan.

Now all you have to do is find out who he was. The trouble is that quite a few car makers have used the same name.....

[woodinsight]

Designed by Eric Roberts.
If I understand correctly, the unusual feature you were looking for is that it has an unconventional mechanical layout with gearbox, differential and drive assembly at the front and the engine at the rear.

[Tom_I]

And we have a winner! Good work!

Yes, this was the brainchild of a Somerset-based designer called Eric J. Roberts, and you are right in that it had the unusual arrangement of a rear-mounted engine with front-wheel-drive. Also unusual was that the driveshafts were arranged to allow extreme steering lock. I don't know any details of the universal joints, but they were intended to be able to drive at an angle of 90 degrees. This is shown in the diagram below, where you can see that the intention was that the car could turn on an axis mid-way between the rear wheels, giving extreme manoeuvrability.

But it appears to have come to nothing. Here's an excerpt from one of the articles, this one from the journal Design, July 1966.

First, the town cars which exist only as drawings or small models...

...But of all the town cars so far mooted, one of the most interesting is that designed by Eric Roberts, who has been looking at the problem of town cars over the last few years.

Mr Robert's present town car (which he calls a town sedan), has evolved from a version designed three years ago, and contains most of the principles mentioned in this article. The sedan is designed to park in either the conventional manner or nose to tail on to the kerb, has a turning circle of 13ft, can pivot on its rear axle, and is only 7ft 5inches long. It has an unconventional mechanical layout, with gearbox, differential and drive assembly at the front, and the engine at the rear, And seats three people or one person and a lot of luggage. Large windows and a low waist line provide exceptional vision, and the bumpers are designed to absorb impact without damage to the coachwork. Finally, a locker under the bonnet allows luggage to be loaded from the pavement when the car is parked nose-on. But despite the fact that the car has been shown to a number of motor car manufacturers, there seems little chance (at least, at the moment) of its being put into production.

[Allemano]

 .. completely forgot that source

[Otto Puzzell]

That was a tasty puzzle!