This weekend I was in Western North Carolina, enjoying the lumpier part of the state, taking in the natural beauty and, it seems, some of the unnatural beauty, as you can see above. That’s a vehicle I saw while in Asheville, driving around noisily, and it made me realize that this is part of a largely unsung tradition in America: the UFO car.
I’m not exactly sure why, and I don’t really have evidence to back it up quite as thoroughly as I’d like, but I feel like there have always been a couple UFO/flying saucer-shaped cars rolling around the country, popping up on local news stories maybe once a year, at least if my fuzzy memories from childhood can be considered viable historical documentation.
I think there was even one in the town I grew up in as a kid, Greensboro, NC, and I think it was based on a Volkswagen Beetle pan, like so many backyard kit-cars of that era? I feel like the UFO car is part of American folk art, as valid as chainsaw sculptures and muffler men.
This particular UFO car seems to be built on, based on the fact that it has three wheels under there and the distinctive sound of the engine, a Cushman Truckster or something similar to that. The method of construction is clever and a good way to re-body something like a Cushman with more ease than fabricating a metal body.
Maybe more ease, but I’m not implying any less skill is required for a textile/soft type of body like this: it’s clear that care has been taken in putting this together, and there must be some rigid hoops in that thing holding the shape around the middle. And the use of tentacled and alien-shaped inflatables works well, and the resulting aliens remind me a bit of the famous Kang and Kodos of the Simpsons:
Let’s look at some other examples of the UFO car genre; there’s some relatively well-known ones currently, including this on built on a 1968 VW Beetle:
This one is interesting in how much of the existing Beetle body it retains; the whole stock Beetle greenhouse is retained, and the (aluminum?) body looks to be built right onto the original structure. I wish I could see how the doors work, though.
Here’s a good full-body-replacement example, from Brooklyn – the Wisconsin one, not the one with better corned beef sandwiches – built sometime in the 1980s on a 1976 Chevy Camaro:
I think at the moment the currently operating flagship of the UFO car fleet has to be this one built from a 1991 Geo Metro by Steve Anderson:
This UFO car got some attention when it was pulled over by a cop while driving from Indiana to Roswell, New Mexico:
While not strictly saucer-shaped, I have had the pleasure of driving a handmade spacecraft-shaped car, Baron Margo’s incredible rocket car, also built on a (heavily modified) VW Beetle chassis:
Oh hey, this is all sort of appropriate for today, May 4! Live long and prosper in the Force, as they say!
The post An Underappreciated American Automotive Tradition: The UFO Car appeared first on The Autopian.
