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.

The overriding temptation, when seeing some guy (usually a guy with a mustache -- why is that?) rolling down the sidewalk on a Segway, is to shake one's head and ponder how any self-respecting adult could be caught dead or alive on such a dorky looking machine.

Of course, that superior feeling usually only lasts until one actually gets a chance to try riding one for him/herself. Then the derisive laughter turns to a sort of wonder, accompanied by the obligatory query, "How the hell do these things work, anyway?"

The question we've been asking ourselves lately, however, is how in the world did we miss out a while back on the introduction of a concept ride, vaguely similar in theory to the Segway, called The Embrio, a one-wheeled motorcycle from Bombardier that looks like it could orbit the Earth, whip up a banana-yogurt smoothie, and blow in the doors of an IROC Z -- all at the same time.

As Bombardier poetically put it when the company rolled out the idea a few years back:

"The Embrio concept is a recreational and commuting vehicle that uses gyroscopic and electronic technology. It is a means of transportation, as well as a way of enjoying transportation as a positive activity. The main power source is a hydrogen fuel cell. In stand-by configuration, the vehicle's front wheels deploy to the ground like a jet plane landing gear to increase longitudinal stability. Thus stabilized, the Bombardier Embrio looks perfectly at home in the urban landscape, displaying the beauty of its sculptural lines until it's time to go for a ride."

Wheels that "deploy to the ground like a jet plane landing gear to increase longitudinal stability"? 

Sexier words have rarely been uttered! (Or scribbled in a press release.)

Again, we acknowledge that we're coming a little late to the Embrio party, but as motorcycle and Schwinn Stingray fans who, as kids, dreamed of being able to ride around in a state of perpetual, high-speed wheelie-ness, we feel that the concept smacks of genius.