The story
The request sounded almost reasonable: a young German client, Thomas Gehrig, wanted something to explore his family's 150-acre property in. Franco Sbarro heard that and went shopping for aircraft parts. The wheels came off the landing gear of a Boeing 727 that had crashed at Geneva airport, each weighing 200 kg (441 lb) until Goodyear helped slim them down and developed tires to suit. The chassis was a heavily reworked Range Rover, the body was Kevlar rather than the polyester Sbarro usually worked in, and the engine was a big Mercedes V8 rated at 350 hp, good for a claimed 130 mph.
Everything about it is a cartoon made solid. There are no doors and no roof, 8 exhausts sprout through the hood, Recaro racing seats sit inside a roll cage, and the cargo bay carries a generator and a folding mini-motorcycle, a sensible precaution in a machine this thirsty. What it never did was reach the man who ordered it. The final bill outran Gehrig's means, and the Monster G was sold to a collector in Japan along with 4 other Sbarros before later going on display in Europe. It remains a single, unrepeatable joke told at full volume.
