Strange fruit: driving the Mini-based Outspan Orange

There’s only one door and it’s cut into the rear – its stay is a bent-wire hook of the kind used to secure garden gates – raising uncomfortable questions over how you might get out should an errant vehicle squeeze the Orange by smashing into it from behind. A rear-ender is less likely than an incursion into the Orange’s flanks, however. Its girth is slightly wider than that of a 7.5-tonne lorry, with huge curves of peel overhanging the dinky 10in wheels like the belly of a five-pints-a-night man. 

Such juicy width allows the Orange to be almost sumptuously upholstered within, its ceiling and walls surfaced with deep-padded vinyl stitched to resemble fruit segments. The cabin ambience is of a teenage fantasy bedroom circa 1973. Sunset-hued bench seats are mounted beneath each of the generous side windows, and they’re broad enough to allow their occupants to lounge luxuriantly, unencumbered by seatbelts. The driver gets one, this mild reassurance being potential compensation for the fact that while your right leg lives in the tunnel-like footwell housing the accelerator and brake, your left must dangle from the seat into the central corridor that runs along much of the Orange’s floor. 

The weird driving position will nevertheless prove a lesser trouble should your journeying occur on a warm day. None of the windows open, the temperature within soon turning as hot as a harvest-ripening sun. There are a couple of vents, but they only dribble air when the Orange is in motion. 

Speaking of motion, it’s a surprise to discover that the Orange corners with the quicksilver zest of a standard Mini, the steering instantly sharp and the tight-packed chassis unexpectedly resistant to understeer, at least at low speeds. With more ambitious pace – and 30-40mph feels ambitious in a globe with the head room to support top-hats – the Orange succumbs to corkscrew pitching that could quickly turn into a headline-grabbing incident. It’s easy to imagine the Orange toppling and rolling away, the tangerine orb advancing like a giant bowling ball attacking a cluster of skittles. It would be hard not to laugh, if painful for all occupants other than the belted driver, his fellow passengers flung around the padded cabin like socks in a tumble dryer. 

Happily, if not for onlookers in need of entertainment, this Orange remains upright at all times. Its womb-like orange world proves oddly soothing despite the threat of toppling and despite the pith-taking lack of pace. Much more than 40mph is pushing the juicer, 30mph decidedly wiser if you’re to continue enjoying the Orange’s charms. 

Many of these emerge merely by staring at it. The more you look, the more thoughtfulness you see. There’s that green fibreglass stalk moulded into a depression in the Orange’s roof. Its rind suffers with heavy orange-peel – “it takes ages to wash because of the dimples”, says owner Sandy Delgarno, who displays the car at the Grampian Transport Museum – while a palm-filling glassfibre orange doubles as the door handle to the fruit’s psychedelic womb. The familiar brick-like tail-lights of a Mini hang jauntily from its rump, the headlights hide behind fairings and much of the glass is orange tinted. That once included the windscreen, but the law no longer allows the driver a more optimistically hued view of the world. Never mind. No car I’ve ever driven has triggered so many smiles, so many looks of startlement, so many fumblings for smartphones and so many thumbs-up for every mile driven. It’s the ultimate orange sales aid.

More edible motoring treats to savour

Wienermobile: There’s more than one of these grimly obscene-looking machines, the first of them extruded in 1936 by the US’s Oscar Mayer sausage company. Wienermobiles are well enough known to have their own Wikipedia entry. Drivers are recruited from university and known, possibly unfortunately these days, as Hotdoggers. Vehicles sacrificed for the sizzling task range from a Willys Jeep to V8-powered trucks and, most recently, the Mini Cooper S.

Cadbury’s Creme Egg car: Rather more durable and decidedly less munchable than the chocolate product it advertises, the Creme Egg car was commissioned by Cadbury-Schweppes in the late 1980s. It is based on a Bedford Rascal van and five were built, their ovoid forms resembling a less healthy version of the Outspan Mini. Corgi Toys makes a model of the car that, slightly disappointingly, proves inedible.

Cheeseburger car: This unappetising wheeled burger is to be found in Kansas City, promoting the bap-bracketed food medley that awaits you within the Westport Flea Market, should your cravings remain undimmed. Should that be the case, your five-patty burger awaits, floating in an ocean of chips and with no mention of a defibrillator side order.