This six-wheeled Italian supercar is the weirdest car you’ve never heard of

This six-wheeled Italian supercar may be the weirdest car you’ve ever seen.

The Covini C6W is certainly attention grabbing, if nothing else.

With two seats, two doors and a whole lot of wheels, it was produced between 2004 and 2016.

But before that was a long and complicated to get the project off the ground – after all, as the saying goes ‘Don’t reinvent the wheel, just realign it’.

DISCOVER SBX CARS: The global premium car auction platform powered by Supercar Blondie

The six-wheeled supercar that you’d never heard of before

Believe it or not, the C6W wasn’t the first time that a six wheeler had been attempted.

It took inspiration from the 1976 Tyrell P34, which had two pairs of smaller front wheels.

The 1970s also saw the six-wheeled Panther Six appear on the scene – although only two ever got made.

Covini Engineering first attempted developing the supercar in the 1970s, but the project was dormant by the 1980s.

In 2003, the idea would be revived and a prototype would be made by the next year.

The stats given for the C6W are all pretty impressive – 430HP and 350Ib-ft of torque, and capable of reaching 60mph in under four seconds.

The top speed was reportedly 186mph.

But why six wheels?

Funnily enough, Covini cited safety as a top motivator in the quirky design choice.

They reasoned that tire blowouts would be far less dangerous should they occur and that wet surfaces would become safer to drive over.

More tires would also make for a better quality of drive if going over a bumpy road, as they would be spread across more points of contact.

What ended up happening to the C6W – and can you buy one?

You may think six sounds like a magic number and want to get your hands on this Italian dynamo.

Well, reports indicate that most will cost around $640,000.

At the time they were being made, between six and eight C6Ws were made each year.

That leaves us with somewhere between 72 and 96 six wheeled cars out there – we won’t do the math on how many tires they have altogether.

It’s been decades now and the six wheel design has never quite caught on, outside of being a novelty.

Still, who’s to say that it couldn’t catch on in the future?

We recently saw that a six wheeler G-Wagen was possible, even if it was bizarrely inspired by the Popemobile.

There’s also some cool mods out there that pop in a few extra wheels – like this Chevy pickup turned Transformers tribute.

As Victor Hugo once said: ‘No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.’

We might be waiting a while yet for six wheelers.