Bio Diesel Frankenstein Art Car - Lives on French Fry Oil

Womble Truck - Bio Diesel Frankenstein Art Car - Lives on French Fry Oil

The Womble Truck is a bio diesel Frankenstein art car that lives on french fry oil and may very well be one of Britain's most environmentally friendly cars. It was pieced together in a lab from 21 different cars but is capable of reaching speeds up to 80mph...eventually.

The vehicle was cobbled together from an array of car parts including some from a Sixties Morris 1000, Seventies Mini, a Ford, a Reliant Robin, an MG Midget, a Vauxhall Viva and a Volvo 740. This Frankenstein art car is definitely the poster child for budget mod projects.

It was created by sculptor and environmentalist Buzz Knapp-Fisher, who spent the last six years modifying the automobile into an almost carbon-free mode of transport. He spent about $400 on the car and made some modest and cheap adjustments over the years. Artistically speaking it works because even thought he used all kinds of car parts he managed to stay on one side of the color spectrum.

The Womble Truck started out as a gas car but he eventually was converted to run on bio diesel and now runs entirely on french fry oil. It can run on regular diesel and only does so if its too cold to start with bio diesel first. As you can imagine his gas bill is way low. Nice work Buzz and good luck on your next project with the electric car.
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Womble Truck - Bio Diesel Frankenstein Art Car - Lives on French Fry Oil

Womble Truck - Bio Diesel Frankenstein Art Car - Lives on French Fry Oil

The Fin Car by Bill Lockner

the fin car

Bill Lockner’s car is a 1979 Volvo that has been enhanced and rebuilt using scrap yard metal, and car parts that were bound for the landfill.“It started out stock,” Lockner explains, “and as time went by, things got added to it.” These things include truck fenders, the back end of a Rambler, and a fin.“[The Fin Car] was an idea to use up and change a car that to me represented soccer moms in the ‘70s,” Lockner says. “Every soccer mom had a ‘79 Volvo.”Lockner’s car features a removable fin, naturally, and is fully operational. He has driven his car to art car festivals throughout Washington, and regularly services his car to keep it running for everyday use.“What I like about it is that it makes me laugh,” Lockner says. “Wherever I go, when I drive it, it makes me laugh.”Lockner has owned five or six art cars over the years, and currently has another that’s a work in progress. His newest car project is a 1975 Gremlin that Lockner hopes to turn into a kinetic sculpture.

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10 Great Ways To Paint a Volvo - Volvo getting in on the art car bandwagon

Volvo Art Car by Lowrider

Volvo is the latest company to get in on the art car band wagon along with BMW, Tesla and many others.

Last February at a rail station in Zurich ten groups of Swiss street artists painted and repainted Volvo S60 and canvas. It took five days to record the event with a camera mounted across from the exhibit that took a photo of the artists’ accomplishments every five seconds. The video by the way is fantastic. Over a period of five days approximately 35,000 commuters got a chance to see these graffiti street artist work their craft on a volvo art car.

One of the artist took advantage of the time-lapse photography and made their project into a very humporous stop-motion animation

“Our intentions with this art project was to express and emphasize in a creative and innovative way the design of the Volvo S60,” said Volvo Cars Switzerland president Anouk Poelmann.

The cars turned out great but its too bad they had to paint over each peace, it would have been great to see each of these art cars out on the road turning heads.

Volvo Art Car by Donovan, Onu and wes 21

Volvo Art Car by Blackyard

Volvo Art Car by Daim

Volvo Art Car by Nevercrew

Volvo Art Car by Sukibamboo

Volvo Art Cr by C-Line

Art by Yummy Industries

Volvo Art Car by Pius Portmann

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Lightning McQueen Volvo Rally Art Car

If you were 3 years old, what car do you want your parents to own? It's not an easy question to ask a 3 year old as there answers are limited. However, Lightning McQueen surely has to be one of the top. And, if you need a sporty looking vehicle to base your Lightning McQueen on - what would you choose? A Volvo 740 of course.

In this case, three grown adults made the car of their dreams, apparently. A Volvo 740 plucked from obscurity that had spent its life driving round the UK's home counties, was now made into an art car. And driven across Europe repeatedly on our events.

I've never actually worked out what the motivation to make this car was, apart from further capitalising on a Cars dvd they had obviously bought.

You may be wondering whether there are any similarities between this car and a real sports car. There aren't.

However, the side effect of being the proud owner of Lightning McQueen meant that the owner was constantly bugged by their kids to take them to school in Lightning, which included half the kids from the neighbourhood. As the owner lamented one day, we can do the school run in a brand new Mercedes, or Lightning. Lightning won every time.

So there we have it. How to impress your children. Make Lightning McQueen.

By Justin Clements Street Safari

Spaced out Moonraker Volvo Rally Art Car

From the deranged minds that brought you the Tank Volvo and Helicopter, we have a space shuttle theme.

Not sure what the background to the idea from these particular overachievers is, maybe Moonraker, but they decided to do a space shuttle theme, with a trailer tent (its like a tent, but on a trailer) with a world on it.

Obviously, making a space shuttle out of a Volvo just doesn't work (you need a BMW 1600 for that, which we shall show you in future weeks), so they made their own space shuttle, mounted two side boosters (SRBs) to the Volvo, and effectively made the Volvo into the external fuel tank.

Then, bolt a great big round piece of metal onto the trailer, paint the Earth on it, and hey presto, you have your very own horizontal Space Shuttle Program, with a diagram of the Earth on the trailer behind incase you forget what your home planet looks like.

The team (the overachievers) even put in some pyrotechnics so that the shuttle actually looks like it has an exhaust trail! We like. Partly because it's always fun to see a bit of thought behind these things, and partly because the chance of the whole thing catching fire is greatly increased.

The trailer tent deserves it's own 15 seconds of fame. It was possibly the mankiest tent you have ever seen in your life. They think the previous owners bought all the camping gear, went camping once, didn't like it, packed the tent wet (remember it's canvas), and let the whole thing fester and rot for several years.

When the team opened the tent for the first time in many years, there were literally bits missing from the canvas, large sections in fact.

But quick to their aid came some drinking aids. They installed a set of optics in the trailer for each evening, and as long as you got far too drunk, you didn't notice the howling gail in the car each night. Or at least, I think that's how that was meant to work.

By Justin Clements Street Safari

Volvo Art Car Splattered to Perfection

Volvo Art Car Splattered to Perfection. I don't know maybe they missed a spot:)

C-3PO's Car found Parked in LA called Dub Robot

C-3PO's Dub Robot art car was seen parked in Santa Monika some weeks ago, photographed by Ellen Bloom on her LA beat. Mystery solved, C-3PO drives an old golden Volvo.

Photos by Ellen Bloom

Volvo Tank and Helicopter Banger Rally Art Car

End2End is a Land's End to John O'Groats banger rally in the UK. The event is based around camping rather than hotels, although we don't mind teams doing guest houses if camping is too rough.

However, we do encourage caravans on this event. Its a Banger Rally meets Carry On Camping.

With that said, Team Atlantic Booze Cruisers took up the challenge of making a caravan theme for their art car and caravan. They took a perfectly good volvo with a camper and turned into a Tank with a gun turret of unknown fire power. The caravan was made to look a like a bloated RAF helicopter. Not sure if it will ever take to the sky's, but I am sure its very comfy on the inside. Bernard Montgomery would be proud of these troops.

Only the mind of a warped individual (Rob) could possibly come up with the Volvo Tank and Helicopter.

You decide:

a) we like how your mind works, Rob
b) we are actually quite disturbed how your mind works, Rob
or c) hey, I can do better than that!

Enjoy the build pictures!

The Sauna - Riding the Alps in Style

The Sauna was built from a Volvo 240 and taken on CzechWrecks 2009, a 1500 mile 4 day journey starting from Calais, France through Swiss and Italian Alps all the way to Prague, Czech Republic.

What we have here is about 1/3rd of a ton of wood paneling being applied to the Volvo.

If you are wondering whether this wood had any impact on performance, I am assured it did. What performance they had to start with, remember that Volvo 240 are agricultural at best, that performance was soon zeroed.

Chris and Tom and their team built this car to raise money for charity and an opportunity to travel in their bath towels riding the sauna over some of the highest passes in Europe.

StreetSafari Rally Art Cars from the UK Now a Regular Feature!!!

StreetSafari, organizer of the world's best banger rallies, has teamed with Art Car Central to showcase some of the countless creations of our teams over the years.

For those unfamiliar with banger rallies, here is a quick introduction: buy a car on a budget (£250 or $500), repair it, make it legal for the road, take it on a journey across Europe or the States with other like minded people. Whether the car will end up in a foreign scrap yard or be taken back home is up to the team and is usually anybody's guess.

As one might imagine, part of the challenge is simply getting the car to the finish line. For most teams, the challenge starts much earlier. What seems to happen between buying the car and getting it ready for the start line is subject to paint, imagination and -- probably -- alcohol.

We get to see everything. You name it, we've seen it. If there was ever a famous car on television or cinema, we've seen at least five examples of it on our events. General Lee, Starsky & Hutch, the A Team, Ghostbusters, all done to death. We see rally themes from Audi, Skoda, Martini, Pink Pig, and just about any other you can think of. The quality of the theme seems to vary with the quantity of what the team has drunk, as much as with their creative ability.

Sometimes a team will just paint or decorate the car to a theme they made up. That's where we get the stand out cars.

Today's fabulous art car is a 1992 Volvo 480, with possibly the most intricate design we have ever seen in all the years and events that we've done. Its nickname on the event was simply "the Rorschach car" and everyone knew which that meant. When we first saw this car we made enquiries that it was being brought back to the UK after event, as it would be a crying shame to send this car to the crusher before it had enough time to be appreciated for the masterpiece that it was.

The story behind this art car is that two friends had bought it but had no idea what to do for a theme until they bumped into a rather talented artist friend. He then proceeded to draw all over the car and took about three weeks to do it. We believe the car was then sealed in a lacquer to give it a lasting finish, and we think the car is now in Glasgow somewhere.

From a distance, the drawing appears as one giant doodle. The closer you look, however, the more diverse and detailed the images become. A real piece of car art if ever we saw one.

By Justin Clements of StreetSafari
 

10 Insane SpongeBob Art Cars - Insanity Intervention in the House

By orbaddict	By Lotta of Mom O Matic
By BinaryApe	By Druffel
by Colwyn Bay	By Viz79
via	By ebi debi
via	don't know

If you are a normal parent you probably have kids songs running through your head at all times. I just happen to get Sponge Bob Stuck in my head today and the only cure was just to find all the Sponge Bob "Art" Cars and post them. Its not that the SpongeBob art cars are insane but you go insane even contemplating doing this to your car. It's like the song never go away...ever. These people clearly have kids and its obvious that they are insane and need intervention big time.

Mercedes Bonz Art Car - New meaning to the word road kill

by surlygrrrl [ELBfoto].

by Delta Niner.

This Volvo is covered in hundreds of bones is called the Mercedes Bobz. Road kill just took a different meaning.