Amazing dwarf car documentary teased

Jonathon Ramsey — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:30:00 EST

Filed under: Classics, Videos, Specialty

It's hard to tell without another car for reference, but in the image above, 72-year-old Ernie Adams is driving a very small car. Actually, the technical name is a "dwarf car," a road-legal nearly-perfect replica of a full-sized car, and Adams built it from scratch. He's been building dwarf cars since 1965 - all of them from scratch, by hand. Adams was apparently the first to do it, and along the way he created the first dwarf race car and, unintentionally, the dwarf car racing series.

Working on his property in Arizona, Adams is still building them, and Jeff Diehl has put together a documentary on the man and his fantastic little creations. Adams was once the editor of a magazine called Dwarf Car Racer, so he knows the subject well. You can have a watch of the trailer for the doc below, it's an eye popper when you see Adams on the road in traffic. For an even fuller picture, check out the second Hemmings link to a magazine piece on Adams and his toys.

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Amazing dwarf car documentary teased originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MAKE reader builds Ariel Atom replica out of spare parts

Jeremy Korzeniewski — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:01:00 EST

Filed under: Performance, Green, Technology, Specialty

Click above for more shots of this home-built Ariel Atom replica

We can think of few better ways to spend our evenings than bending, welding and beating metal into submission to produce our own car and it seems that we are not alone. MAKE reader, Utah resident and Flickr user proximacentuari took the design of the Ariel Atom -- currently one of the most desirable track cars in existence -- and replicated it in his home garage. What's more, he documented the entire process with pictures and uploaded the whole thing to the internet. This is the coolest show-and-tell ever.

Powering the beast, known by its builder as z59, is a Honda K-Series four-cylinder engine from a wrecked Acura RSX. It's an impressive build, taking "15 months and at least 800 hours of work in the garage," all done without any official Ariel schematics. "The frame is completely custom. I didn't make a single measurement off the real car... what you see is a series of very educated guesses," according to the builder. Much of the car is made from scrap parts, including the bodywork from a number of old appliances, a kayak and a doghouse. Check out a few pics in our gallery and click here to see the entire photostream on Flickr. Thanks for the tip, Pedro!

Gallery: Home-built Ariel Atom replica

[Sources: Flickr, MAKE]

MAKE reader builds Ariel Atom replica out of spare parts originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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