0:00
I've never seen anything like this before. Can we touch it
0:02
Sure you can. I built a lot of hot rod cars over the years
0:12
and I decided I wanted to do something completely ridiculous, and so the idea of the banana car came from that
0:21
I was in a gas station, and there was a bowl of fruit, as I'm standing in line right next to where I was
0:26
and on top was a banana that ran fairly straight and curved at the back
0:29
and I picked it up and I'm looking at it and I'm studying this
0:33
and I'm picturing where the wheels would go in the engine and the seats
0:37
and I picture it driving down the road and start laughing. A product of the warped minds of our car fabricators, the mutant brothers
0:47
The fully road legal big banana car is a regular site on the streets of Michigan
0:57
I bought a 1993. Ford F-150 pickup truck, took off all the sheet metal, which left the nice slender frame
1:05
with the engine, all the suspension still attached. I then built the frame, the skeleton of the banana, out of rebar, covered it with chicken wire
1:15
sprayed it with urethane foam like you insulate houses with, then sculpted that to a nice
1:20
banana shape and then fibreglassed over the top. The fruity vehicle took two and a half years to build with the work mainly just being done on Sundays banana car was spread out over two and a half years so it hard to say exactly how much it did end up costing somewhere between and
1:37
I could have done it for a lot less than that, but we replaced everything
1:41
And to credit Steve, though, that doesn't include any labor. You're looking at hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of man hours
1:47
The big banana car is four-wheel drive, and it's surprisingly fast. I've had it up to 85 miles an hour
1:54
Before you get freaked out, that was in Texas. where the speed limit was 80, so I was going five over
2:00
and I was still the slowest one on the road. I got bad news for you. I've done 85 of Michigan
2:06
But it was downhill. The vehicle stands just over 10 feet tall
2:12
However, the stem is retractable to let the car go under low bridges
2:16
There have been two occasions when the stem wasn't low enough. It makes you realize quickly that you just made a mistake
2:24
Unsurprisingly, the banana car doesn't go unnoticed. Oh man, we get the reaction
2:31
Quite often we'll do events at schools. Winners, 60, 7 and 8 year old, they're just screaming
2:37
It's the funniest thing ever. We've been asked a few times if we would sell the big banana car
2:43
but I realized that if we did, what we'd be giving up isn't just a car
2:47
It's all of that. It's all that goodwill that just surrounds it
2:51
And it's lovely. It's wonderful
