Muppet Train Keeps Rolling With Le Maximum: Cold Start

Yes, that’s right, I read your comments and I heard you, so we’re wrapping up the week with more Muppet car stuff. You don’t have to twist my arm, which is ironic, because watching those foam-filled Muppet arms get all twisted around like fat udon noodles is always hilarious. Today I’m going to change it up in two ways: I’m going to leave those twin comfort zones of ’70s and ’80s era Muppetry and existing, real-world-identifiable cars and instead we’re going to talk about a more recent Muppet venture (well, only one decade old) and a car that never technically existed in the real world. The movie is 2014’s The Muppets Most Wanted and the car is known as Le Maximum.

The Le Maximum was built specifically for the movie, mostly as a way to get some gags out of the bird-out-of-air subplot of the very, intensely, clinically American Sam the Eagle being stuck in Europe, and really milking all of those European stereotypes, such as the predilection for tiny cars. I suppose the fillmakers didn’t think any of the many, many European microcars was exactly right, because they eventually made their own, and gave it the ironic name “Le Maximum.”

The name is sort of explained in the scene where its introduced:

I mean, I get it, the size is positively decadent. Who needs all that vastness, really? It’s downright showy.

Looking at Le Maximum, I think the designers did a pretty great job making a sort of composite microcar. In looking at it, I see two primary influences:

I see Scootacar in the main body design and proportions, and a lot of exaggerated Mini in the front end.

I like how they gave it a face that’s less cute and more unhinged, like a tiny rabid badger or something like that. The face seems to be glowering a bit, determined  and focused, and then its attached to that gumdrop body.

It’s fun and ridiculous and accomplishes its task perfectly. It’s also not some CG phantom; this is a real, functional vehicle, and, even more incredibly, was 3D-printed.

There’s a whole article about it here; it was built on a golf cart chassis, the body panels were all 3D printed, and what’s really incredible is that it fits not just a full-grown human adult, but two, one of whom is puppeteering the full-grown adult Muppet in there as well. You can see some of the cramped and clever packaging in these 3D wireframes:

Look at that! I love that it’s actually drivable, too.

That article noted that the original design inspiration was an unnamed Russian car, and if I had to guess what they were looking at initially, I bet it was one of these SMZ “invalid” cars, made for disabled war veterans:

I mean, I can’t prove this, but it’s just a hunch I have.

I think what they ended up with works better for the role, anyway. The car itself is sort of like a drivable Muppet; in the same way Kermit is a strangely stylized amphibian, this is a strangely stylized microcar, and it’s controllable and steerable by a person. A puppeteer, if you will. Are we not all puppeteering our cars as we drive?

Oh man, that’s deep.