Brothers Dennis and Peter Adams were working at Marcos, a British sports car manufacturer, when they decided to venture out and make futuristic cars investigating the “extremes of styling.” What they came up with eventually landed in Kubric’s “A Clockwork Orange.”
The M-505 Probe 16 was just 34 inches tall and had no doors. Instead, it opted for a sliding glass roof that required passengers to hop into and slide down into almost fully reclined bucket-styled seats.
While the interior looked like a jet fighter cockpit, it had a more down-to-earth 1.8-liter OHV, 1,900cc JanSpeed-tuned 4-cylinder Austin B-series engine from British Motor Corporation (BMC) mounted transversely behind the driver. It was mated to a 4-speed manual gearbox with four-wheel independent suspension and disc brakes.
The Probe 16 was displayed at the London Motor Show in 1969, where it won “Best Styling Exercise.” Three were made, but only two are known to still exist (chassis no. AB/2 and AB/3). For some time, it was believed that the prototype caught fire and burned (as mid-engine cars from that period were known to do), leaving chassis AB/3 and AB/4.
However, according to Bonhams (who sold AB/3 in a 2020 auction for $184,800), the prototype, sold to songwriter Jimmy Webb, still exists, while the AB/4 does not. Whatever the case, it’s definitely a concept car that should have been made.