Brooke 25/30HP Swan – Luxury Cars of the 20th Century
As far as eccentric cars go, the Brooke 25/30HP Swan is one of the quirkiest. The brainchild of Scotsman, Robert Mathewson, the one-off Swan’s amazingly detailed, beautiful wooden bodywork was hand sculpted and placed upon a Brooke chassis. Upholstered in gorgeous Indian silk, the bodywork exhibits spectacular ornate golden sculptures of miniature swans surrounding the headlamps and sculpted doorhandles resembling fish. Upon returning to his home in Calcutta, Mathewson was forbidden to drive the car as it scared local elephants. The car then fell into the ownership of the Maharaja.

The Swan featured numerous gratuitous features never before and never again seen on a car, all in the name of luxury. The beak of the Swan fired boiling hot water onto the road in front, used to clear peasants who experience the misfortune of standing in front of the car, the tires were adorned with brushes to clean them and passengers could communicate with the driver using a nautical telegraph. The head of the swan housed glowing red eyes and the passenger cabin featured a quasi-keyboard used to change the note of the exhaust. Today, The Swan resides in the Louwman Museum in the Netherlands.