It's no secret, and no surprise, that car designers often turn to Mother Nature for inspiration.

Witness the Tatra 77, seemingly modeled on some sort of creepy ocean floor-dwelling creature from the Mesozoic. Or the Mustang, which might not look anything like a horse but, in its finest hour, evoked the wildness and speed of its namesake.

Now comes the Mercedes Bionic (above), a freaky little concept car that borrows its shape not from a predator or a wild, snorting beast of the high chaparral, but from the lowly and wonderful tropical boxfish.

According to PopSci.com, "The design team eschewed expensive, complicated and heavy fuel-cell or hybrid powertrains, opting instead for a 1.9-liter four-cylinder direct-injection turbodiesel that pushes the fishmobile to 62 mph in 8.2 seconds with a combined city/highway fuel economy of 70 mpg.

At a constant 56 mph, the concept car will return an amazing 84 mpg."

The boxfish, it seems, is a near-perfect aerodynamic machine, with a drag coefficient of just 0.06, not far from the ideal 0.04 of a water droplet. Not too shabby. We like it.  Or rather, we like the idea--a very fuel efficient car based on the slippery excellence of a wee tropical fish.

Now, would we drive one?  Never.  No way.

Face it, the car looks--well, it looks like a wee tropical fish.

But we're more than willing to keep our minds open to the idea of a streamlined Mercedes that borrows its silhouette from, say, a tiger shark. Now that would be cool--and surely that badass' drag coefficient can't be too far above 0.08 or so.