With “Dupliframes”, you could do something like this in Blender 2.79:

The basic principle is demonstrated by the French architect Matthieu Dupont de Dinechin already in Blender 2.49 here. You can’t do this with an “Array Modifier” in combination with a “Curve Deform Modifier” since the shape shall change for the instanced object on its path for which the keyframe interpolation is quite useful.