The Swan Car, one of the most outrageous vehicle ever built!

3 min read

The so-called Swan Car, a 1910 Brooke 25/30 HP, is regarded as one of the craziest, most eccentric vehicles ever to hit the streets and one look at it is enough to explain why.
Probably the first concept car in the world, It was commissioned in the early 1900s by Robert Nicholl ‘Scotty’ Matthewson, a wealthy British engineer living in Calcutta, by that time belonging to British-India, and It’s never been clear why he was so obsessed with swans.
Maybe because he lived in Swan Park, next to Calcutta Zoo, which was home to many beautiful swans, even though he loved the birds enough to travel to England in 1909 to create a very special with JW Brooks and Company of Lowestoft, Suffolk: a swan-shaped car.
The genius wasn’t bored when he placed the order for its car, but wanted to shock the local elite in Calcutta, and that is where the Scotsman lived during the Twenties.
The following year, in fact, the peculiar vehicle arrived there and immediately became the talk of the town, as It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen, or would ever see again for that matter, with several intriguing features, including a wood body fitted on top of the Brooke metal chassis.
And, because the wood was so thick, the entire vehicle weighed a whopping 6615 lbs, or 3000 kg!

The Swan Car was hand-carved to mimic an actual bird’s feathers and painted in a pearl-white color, also featuring brushes on each tire to ensure that no elephant poop stuck to them.
However, some of its most outrageous features included a special duct that released whitewash on the road from time to time, to create the illusion that the swan had pooped, as well as eight organ pipes and a keyboard for different horn sounds.
Can you imagine?
The floating swan has also a division, because as a passenger it was inappropriate to talk to the the chauffeur, but there is a ringing ‘telegraph’ that will show the driver if you want to go home, turn, go faster, right, stop, straight, left, go slower…really smart!

At the touch of a button, the swan’s beak opened and sprayed hot water fed by the pressurized engine cooling system in an arc to clear the way of pedestrians.
And, not by chance, there were quite a lot of pedestrians wherever the Swan Car went in the streets of Calcutta.
In fact, it got so much attention that it was eventually labeled as too distracting and banned from the city streets and, after spending a small fortune (£10,000 – £15,000) on a vehicle he could no longer drive, our Matthewson decided to part way with the Swan Car.
Actually the Indian police banned Matthewson’s toy from the public roads already after its first ride, as the monster was turning the streets of Calcutta into havoc, scaring not only the public but also the elephants!
Especially in the dark, because the swan looks really scary and spooky when its eyes start to glow.
Luckily for his creation, finding someone wealthy enough to take it off his hands wasn’t too difficult.

The Maharaja of Nabha, Ripudaman Singh, had a thing for rare and unusual objects, and the Swan Car was perfect! And he bought it, for an undisclosed sum.
During the time he owned the unique vehicle, he commissioned a miniature Cygnet as a companion, an electric car and it was built in India 10 years after its much larger mother, and it was perhaps the oldest automobile ever built entirely in India!
Unfortunately for him, he was deposed by the British for incompetence, and both vehicles wound up in the possession of the Louwman Museum in the Netherlands where they can be admired still today.