Augur-Drive Vehicles

I've always been an exotic-vehicle enthusiast, and after a few visits to Burning Man, I came up with the idea for an augur-driven vehicle. It would be cool because it would be completely ridiculous and would tear up the ground it drove over. I think the idea came from the fact that my grandpa has a bunch of augurs lying around his farm.

I took my idea to Johny Amerika, who is the sort of guy who could seriously discuss the possibility of building such a thing. We talked about pros and cons and possible issues and I think he even said he'd seen some guys who'd built one. I filed the idea away in the "someday, with funding" section of my brain and didn't think about it for a year.

Then I stumbled across these futuristic images from Russian propoganda. Apparently in glorious communist Russia we will all be driving these things:




One advantage would be that, given the proper bouyancy, the vehicle would be amphibious. I was surprised to see someone had the same idea, but not too surprised, as there ain't much new under the sun.

Later, I was looking through pictures of abandoned Russian junkyards (yes, that's what I do for leisure) when I saw this picture, without a caption:



I was stunned. There before me was exactly what I'd envisioned. Not only had someone come up with the idea, they'd built it, scrapped it, and now it was rusting away without so much as a comment from the photographer like "hey, check it out, no wheels on this one".

With a little more research, I found out what it was. They called it the ZIL-2906. The Nazis had a little guy:





...and I suspect the Soviets adopted the technology. The most surprising thing is that it goes! Check out this video: