Big Ears and Noddy would greatly approve.
Because in the pantheon of bizarre Australian-made cars, the Tilbrook Three Wheeler is as odd and as completely bonkers as anything a Hollywood scriptwriter could conceive.
But even more wonderful is that the colourful story behind this curious little one-off car, which is now restored to its former glory and resting quietly in a garage in Isabella Plains, is completely true.
The tiny two-stroke three-wheeler is a genuine automotive unicorn, displayed for the very first time in some 70 years at the ACT region's biggest car show, the annual Wheels show, last weekend.
Entrepreneur, engineering whiz, motorcycle racer and small-scale manufacturer Rex Tilbrook, now deceased, built it 72 years ago in his little Adelaide factory.
It was a project undertaken most reluctantly, and only because a particularly keen Tilbrook customer insisted that he do so.
"Rex didn't particularly like cars so he was quite dismissive of them - including this one he designed and built," his grand-nephew and fellow engineer Lyndon Tilbrook said.
"Rex's passion was motorcycles but his main line of business was making sidecars - and he made thousands of them, and sold them all over the country."
Australia's motoring history is rich with extraordinary, colourful stories of little-known local car makers who built machines of all types, put their surnames on the radiators, and have now faded into history.
There was the Tarrant, Shearer, McIntosh, Highland, Sutton, Ziegler, Thomson and the curious and unfortunately named Phizackerley.
But the Tilbrook was perhaps the most curious of them all.
Even the badge appears to have been "borrowed" from the world's oldest car maker, Mercedes Benz.
Such a flagrant copyright indiscretion these days would be sent straight to court but in the late 1940s, the WWII-flogged German brand had much bigger problems to deal with and so Rex Tilbrook just carried on regardless.
Born in 1915, Tilbrook was a self-taught and clever engineer who like many young blokes at the time, loved motorcycles - because that was the widely-accepted, affordable method of private transport at the time - and making them go fast.
He created a business so he could go indulge in his motorcycle racing passion.
"That's how it was back in those days," family historian and restorer Lyndon Tilbrook said.
"If you were successful on the racetrack, then customers would come to you and say: 'build me one of those'. And then if they wanted to go touring on holidays, they asked Rex if he could build them a touring bike, and so it went on."
Tilbrook was arguably Australia's largest and most successful motorcycle sidecar maker from the late 1940s, through the 1950s and '60s even into the early 1970s. His company built them as pods, as side-by-side twin seaters (for the family), as pick-ups and there was even a fully-enclosed "super saloon" version.
"We still don't know how many sidecars Rex's company built because he didn't keep good records for tax purposes," Mr Tilbrook said.
"But we know he built 43 motorcycles - and just one car."
Lyndon Tilbrook's discovery of his grand-uncle's most unusual creation came as a result of a little research and stroke of luck. It was a genuine "barn find" from the hills district of Adelaide where the previous owner had tried - unsuccessfully - to modify it to make it longer.
It took him five years to restore the tiny 197cc car and its quirks are many and varied, as could be expected.
It is basically a four-speed motorcycle but with two wheels up front for steering and one driving wheel at the back. It has one headlight, one tiny wiper for its windscreen, and seating for two small-statured people.
The air-cooled engine directly behind the driver's well-cooked back has a little-known Siba Dynastart control box, which effectively means the four-speed Tilbrook can drive as fast backwards as it can forwards. Provided the driver had the courage.
"From what Rex told me, the bloke who bought it really liked it and drove it to and from his workplace in Adelaide up into the hills on a regular basis," Mr Tilbrook said.
"But what we don't know is how many times he made it home and didn't end up broken down and overheated on the side of the road somewhere."
