One of the neat things that we’ve come to expect here at BangShift.com is the unexpected. Learning about stuff that we never knew existed is pure awesome to us, and when we were tipped off about Charles Taylor and the video of his experiments driving the one-wheel vehicles that he built, we were apoplectic. His creations are very interesting, even though they ultimately went nowhere.

Lots of people have ideas, but few have the intellect and mechanical prowess to actually follow through on them. Charles Taylor, who hailed from Coors beer country in Golden, Colorado, was one of the few. He thought that he could create an all-terrain vehicle that used a single tire, and was intended to service a bunch of different needs from military to forest service.

The vehicles shown in the video below are totally cool, and to be brutally honest, we have not the faintest idea how he actually got the seemingly impossible idea to work. The videos span a length of about 10 years. In the first section, you’ll see his earliest working prototype. It features a small truck tire and a single seat.

Later in the video (and you need to stick around to see the whole thing) you’ll see his final working model, which uses a large tractor tire and can achieve high speeds and is seemingly as manuverable as his small tire unit.

These things are totally impressive and speak to the mechanical genius of Charles Taylor. Although they never sold in mass production, we’d never call these vehicles a failure.

Thanks to BangShift.com member Squirrel for the tip!