Once upon a time, my dad brought home a Corvair (Unsafe at any Speed) as a loaner when his AMC Hornet was in the shop for a week.
Ohh, the Hornet was my Saturday night ride as a teenager. Three on the Tree, ugly as sin and all plasticky inside. Not exactly a Babe Magnet; but, at least it had a bench seat up front for snoggling.... when the shifting elbow wasn't getting all awkward, bumping into Bosoms and other rude intrusions.... But I digress.
I opened up the Boot of the Corvair, or as we Americans would say, the Trunk Lid; which, in a rear engine car is actually the "Bonnet;" or "Hood" as we say in the states,
I got a gander at the Fan belt, for a truly WTF moment. The engineering on the fan belt was an exercise in idiocy. the thing operated (allegedly) within two 90 degree divergent planes. It spun all down there, around whatever, then back up over the whatsis idler, then horizontal around some popcorn popper, then around back, over the falls, back to the vertical whence it wrapped around the Hootis, then back up to another Mobius idler.
A more modern "Serpentine" belt runs all over hell and gone driving everything from the water pump, Alternator to the AC and whatever mysterious emission control devices; but it's a more stoutly engineered piece of belting and remains, faithfully within a single plane of operation.
The only more astounding item of incomprehensible engineering I've ever seen is the inside of an 8 track audio tape. How the hell does the tape magically pull out of the center of the reel only to wrap around the outside of the same reel. It's Bizzarre, I tell you. It makes no sense.
But the Corvair fan belt is such a delusional piece of Floppy Belt engineering that you'd laugh in the face of anyone who tried to sell you a lawn mower rigged like that.
And this is only the top half of it:
