A Chinese professor in Changsha, Hunan Province, has invented a car with rhombus-positioned wheels.

The new-concept car has single front and rear wheels. Two other wheels are parallel and positioned in the middle on each side.

This alignment is believed to improve the car's safety features. Experiments have shown that two such cars would brush past each other in situations which would lead to head-on collisions for conventional cars.

Zhong Zhihua, a professor at central China's Hunan University, worked for one year on designing and producing the model.

The shape of the car is based on that of an airplane, which helps reduce air friction by 35 percent. The market price for the new car is estimated at 80,000 yuan.

Zhong has applied for a patent for his invention.

(Eastday.com 08/19/2001)