Designed by starchitect Zaha Hadid and Rove Gallery owner Kenny Schachter in 2006, the Z-Car concept has been a long time coming. Looking more like something the Jetsons would drive rather than the Beckhams, the design wasn't quite as sleek and sexy as the design world had expected from the promising collaboration. But, as Schachter said, "The world doesn’t need a race car or a quick car, so the original notion was for an environmentally-focused city car." And that is where the Z-Car lives up to its promise; electrically-powered, it's the perfect way of getting from A to B without destroying the earth in its wake. But while being green is all well and good, car manufacturers know it is aesthetics that ultimately sell units. So Hadid and Schachter spent the following two years tweaking their original design to come up with a modified version; gone are the three wheels seen in the designs on this page and in its place is a conventional four-wheel arrangement, while the quirky wraparound windscreen remains intact. Despite the amount of work gone into the project, however, it is yet to be seen whether the Z-Car will hit the production line. If it does, it is likely to be a limited-edition version that everyone talks about but nobody ever sees, let alone drives. But whether it ends up in a gallery or the highway, we don’t care; something that integrates art with engineering so seamlessly is deserving of our love.  
www.rovetv.net / Images: Zaha Hadid