18 Cars People Built In Their Garage
Assembling a car is an intricate process that designers have mastered through thousands of hours of honing their craft. The process is arduous and requires a team of automobile experts to fine tune every inch of the vehicle, thereby ensuring they deliver a product of the highest standard. Every step of the process is delicate, as one mistake could result in the manufacturer recalling the vehicles and tarnishing its brand. Although car manufacturers work prolonged hours to ensure that it unveils a perfect product, some people aren’t concerned about the quality of the car they drive. Many car manufacturers have produced unreliable vehicles, but nothing is more worse than a home-built vehicle.
Building a car may seem like a fun activity that looks easy to accomplish, but building a quality vehicle is difficult. Some people believe they possess the skills to build, in their homes, vehicles that’ll match the standards of the most prominent car manufacturers. Most are wrong and produce a home-built vehicle that’s a joke. To find out how difficult it is to build a vehicle, we peeped inside the homes of car builders who believe they can manufacturer vehicles, and we were shocked at the results. We discovered cars that look ugly and shouldn’t be road-worthy. Our list features the weirdest home-built cars that inexperienced individuals had the audacity to manufacture.
18 GOODWILL BUT BAD PRODUCT
The Goodwill Festival of Speed is a yearly hill climb that takes place at the Goodwood House in England.
The event features historic racing vehicles and is scheduled in July to avoid clashing with the Formula One season.
Over three days, the event attracts 100,000 people as well as some odd vehicles. Some people who attended the event didn’t want the race cars to get all the attention and decided to design vehicles made especially for the occasion. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is to leave the job to professionals.
17 ALL IN ONE
When you cannot afford the mainstream parts to build a vehicle, you have to get creative. The owner of this ugly vehicle incorporated everything that was at his disposal to make a product that resembled a truck he could use to transport goods. At the front of the vehicle is an exposed engine. The mechanical job looks incomplete, and the cabin looks like he made it from metal sheets. The safety features don’t exist, and the cabin resembles a Wendy house. After he completed the first project, the owner thought his invention was remarkable and decided to build another two identical vehicles.
16 RV BEETLE
We’ve already featured homes on wheels but haven’t had an RV or one that looks like this. I don’t think that anybody has seen anything similar to this vehicle. The owner of this vehicle wanted to incorporate his caravan into a vehicle to make it an RV but chose the worst car to support the heavy load.
He converted a Beetle into an RV, making the car slower than usual.
As the Beetle’s engine is at the rear, I wonder how he has access to it. Not only is the engine access a mystery, but the entire vehicle is as well.
15 ONE SIZE FITS ALL
Truth can be stranger than fiction, and that usually applies to Asia. China is one of the world economic leaders. Business is booming, especially in the shoe industry. Regardless of how successful Chinese business owners become, they never pass an opportunity to promote their brands. Kang Shoe factory in China thought that the best way to advertise its product was to deliver it to the market. The manufacturer produced a shoe vehicle as a promotional tool. The driver may think he’s the envy of the town, but wait until it rains.
14 SMART FORNO-ONE
The Smart Fortwo is a 2-seater hatchback car that Smart introduced in 1998. By the end of 2015, Smart had sold almost 2 million Fortwos in 46 countries. That’s unreal, as the car has a 1-liter engine that spurts out 71 horsepower and needs about 14 seconds to go from 0 to 60 mph. Based on only that information, most would believe that everybody would avoid the vehicle like the plague. Not only has the owner of this vehicle embraced the compact vehicle, but he also wanted to get more pleasure from it by adding a miniature bed. The pickup-like bed can fit about two grocery bags.
13 MOBILE HOME
The most common mobile home is a recreation vehicle, which is a vehicle combined with a caravan. It provides living quarters designed for temporary accommodation. Some people are unsatisfied with having only certain amenities while on the road and want to bring their entire home with them, literally. The owner of this vehicle didn’t want to settle for hotel rooms and missed sleeping in his bed, so he decided to fit wheels under his house and install a motor. The result is one of the slowest cars on the road, but maybe that’s because it’s transporting an entire household.
12 DYMAXION
American inventor Buckminster Fuller decided to produce the Dymaxion during the Great Depression. The car featured predominantly at the Chicago 1933/1944 World Fair. Fuller was not satisfied with building one ridiculous car, so he added another to his name. Fuller designed the Dymaxion’s aerodynamic bodywork for increased fuel efficiency and speed. The car has a rear-mounted V-8 engine, three wheels, and a front-wheel drive. You steer the vehicle via its third wheel at the rear, thereby allowing you to steer the vehicle in a tight circle. Fuller admitted that the Dymaxion had handling limitations, especially at high speed or windy conditions.
11 MARCOS GT
If you drove a 1962 Marcos GT Gullwing in the 60s, you were the envy of the town. The car looks like a speed demon eager to get onto the track. Although it looks fast, the Marcos GT could pump out only 60 horsepower.
The car is available at auctions for an average price of $7,000.
If you don’t have that much money, you can build it yourself using plywood and fiberglass monocoque. The problem with that option is that your vehicle will look like this owner’s car. You’re lucky if your home-built version will pump out half the horsepower of the original.
10 DOUBLE TROUBLE
The English manufacturer Mini has gained popularity amongst the female market by redesigning the ugly Mini Cooper that Mr. Bean drove for years. These days, the cars look trendy and capable of good performance. That wasn’t always the case, and the Coopers were prone to break down. It seems that some Mini owners aren’t satisfied with having one problem and want to duplicate their problems. Owning one old Mini Cooper is bad enough, but why would you want to double your problems? Either stick to the new models or get rid of both of the old models.
9 BATMOUSINE
Batman needed a fast vehicle to catch The Joker, so he designed the Batmobile. When the producers featured the vehicle in the late-’80s Batman movie, most of us were in awe. The car was powerful, intimidating and exclusive. A Batman fan wanted to own a similar vehicle but would be content only if the vehicle dwarfed Batman’s vehicle.
He designed the stretched version of the Batmobile and called it the ‘Batmobile Limousine.’ Even Batman needs to be chauffered once in a while, but the vehicle is impractical, as it’s too heavy to reach blistering speeds.
8 TELEPHONE CAR
Whenever you’re in trouble, you can call T-Man. He’s always standing by the phone, waiting to take your call. You can catch him roaming the streets in his telephone car and stop him if your mobile battery has died or you’ve run out of money to make a call.
The audacious individual who built the telephone car forgot that the sun doesn’t shine every day and that he’ll struggle to see through his windshield when it rains as he doesn’t have wipers.
Maybe T-man will call Wiperman when conditions are unfavorable.
7 HENRENDOUS
The male chicken is a rooster, and the female is a hen. Farmers love hens as they can sell the chicken or keep it to lay eggs, thereby making the farmer a good income. Roosters and hens belong on a cock farm and not on the road, especially when your chicken vehicle looks so bad that chickens will get a fright and scuttle away from it. Perhaps the owner of this vehicle wanted to attract hens and designed it as an appealing rooster looking to lay eggs. Whatever his strategy, it seems it didn’t work out, as the vehicle looks ready to fall apart.
6 MERCYELAGO
Lord, have mercy on this home car designer. The Lamborghini Murcielago is a phenomenal vehicle.
The car has a 6.2-liter V12 engine, capable of reaching 0 to 60 mph in 3.4 seconds. The engine pumps out 641 horsepower and reaches a top speed of 210 mph.
To experience the thrill of the ride, you’ll have to fork out $250,000 for the Murcielago. The Italian manufacturer made the car almost impossible to replicate. Some people in third-world countries cannot afford such lavish items and decided to build their version. The result is a ‘lookalike’ Lamborghini without windows.
5 BEAT-IT BEATNIK
Barry Weiss is a producer and music executive who’s worked with acts such as Britney Spears, Chris Brown, and the Backstreet Boys. Gary Chopit designed this ugly vehicle for Weiss, which was originally a 1955 Ford. Chopit transformed it into the largest bubble-top custom car like the original Beatnik Bandit. The car has a Cadillac front end and a futuristic interior as well as an exposed engine. Chopit needed three years to build this vehicle out of metal. Three years of effort to build a car, and that’s the vehicle he produced? Looks like Chopit needs to go back to the drawing board.
4 KISSMOBILE
Kissing booths used to be popular at carnivals. With the advent of technology, everything has become mobile. These days, teenagers don’t have to sneak out of the house to smooch in a booth at a carnival. Instead, they can stand on the side of the road and wait for the Kissmobile to pick them up. The owner of this vehicle wanted to provide privacy to couples who couldn’t keep their hands off of each other during the commute. That seems like a good idea, but we have to question the safety. Let’s hope the owner didn’t forget to install ventilation.
3 TOYING FOR ADULTS
Most of us wish that we had never let go of our youth. The joys of being a small child consisted of playing in the dirt, screaming at the top of our lungs, and riding plastic cars. Some people struggle to let go of their childhood and transform their possessions as a form of nostalgia. The owner of this vehicle did exactly that, as he wanted to remain a kid forever by producing a plastic car. Now, he can support his family by going to work in the car he dreamt about as a kid. Why is he wearing a helmet, though?
2 WOODEN’T WORK
Society has become conscientious about the environment, and car manufacturers have embraced electric cars to remain competitive while appeasing the market. The students at Aston University wanted to showcase their support for a clean environment with cars that don’t pollute by manufacturing a vehicle out of plywood. The car runs on hydrogen and won the Eco-design award at the Shell Eco-Marathon. Although we commend the effort, the safety features are nonexistent, and the performance is dismissal. The vehicle looks like a wooden Smart car with McLaren doors. It’s an amusing but impractical car.
1 WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS
When life gave H.A. Salters lemons, the manufacturer made a lemon car. In 1951, H.A. Salters, based in The Hague, Netherlands, decided to build one of the worst vehicles that man has seen. The car was a three-wheeler that had step wheels, and a 75cc ATCO-engine powered the vehicle. Jan de Lange, who wrote the book Dwergauto’s, claims that the vehicle was a hybrid car. The driver needed to pedal to drive away from a standstill. The car weighed 176 pounds and had a top speed of 22 mph. Don’t get us started on the safety features, as there isn’t much to discuss.
Source: wsj.com.
