The TikiMobile came about as a search for an aircooled VW drivetrain. You see, I was building an ol' skool Volksrod. By ol' skool, I mean a fibreglass Ford Model T body, on a VW floorpan.

     I started out building a Volksrod 30+ years ago. I had purchased a fibreglass model T  "C-Cab" , and actually had it mounted on a VW floorpan. But, we had a new baby, so the cab and VW floorpan were sold separately to pay bills. I was very sad to see the cab driving off down the the street when I sold it 28 years ago.

        Fast forward to 2006. After a cruise with the T-Bird club, we stopped at an antique shop to see what they had. I walked around the corner of the building to see the exact same C-Cab that I had sold 28 years ago. I knew it was the same cab because when I cut the driveshaft tunnel opening (30 years ago), I had cut it crooked.

Over the past 28 years the cab had travelled from Kelso (Washington) to Eatonville (Washington) .I had to have it back. It was for sale, I bought it, and it was in my garage the next weekend.Here are photos of the cab then and now. By the way, the little guy in the 1978 photo is my son, he is now 32 years old.

    I now had the c-cab back in my posession, I just needed a VW drivetrain to complete the project. I started checking Craig's list for an older bug (for the drivetrain) . I kept getting beat out on everything that was in my price range. There had been this plywood bodied dune buggy on Craig's list for a couple of months. No one was interested in this little car.  I thought about it, and realized that this little car would at least save me the trouble of getting rid of the bug body. If it ran OK.

I contacted the owner of the car, and set up an appointment to see it. The next few pictures, are the pictures I took that night.  It was originally built by a gentleman who was a retired Boeing Quality Control Manager. The car kind of looked like a  plywood version of a King Midget, or or VW Thing. Well, the person who built the plywood body on the car passed away, and his grandson then inherited the car. The car sat in a garage for the next 10 years as the grandson moved to Alaska. The person that I bought the car from (Brian) ,owns a King Midget, he originally bought it from the grandson as a companion car to his King Midget. He decided to cut down the amount of cars in his collection, so he put the little plywood car up for sale.

I took the car for a test drive. It was exhilarating, and terrifying to drive at the exact same time. The problem was too much air in the front tires, it drives fine now.

Well I bought it, took it home, and got ready to tear it apart. My wife, son, and friends all told me "Don't take that car apart, do something with it!" I now had to figure out what to do with the car. I photo-shopped a couple of different ideas, but gave up on both of them.

Well, the something that would forever change the little plywood car was surfboards. I got on Craig's list, and bought a couple of used surfboards. Mike at Precision Shapes NW had a couple of used short boards listed on Craig's list. I laid the surfboards on the rear fenders of the car for a couple of months, to figure out how I was going to rebuild the plywood body.

I also had a skull and crossbones that I put on front of the car. I eventually decided not to use it on the front. It needed tiki's, which were purchased on Ebay

My attention was turned to making the back of the car body. There was kind of a box that was the engine cover. I changed the back of the car to be one width, all the way back to the bumper. The surfoard mounts are actually bunk bed safety rails. The engine vents are wooden window shutters. The upper taillights in the back are '59 Caddy tailights, mounted in kichen sink drains.

The eyes and tongues of the tikis are turn signals.

The TikiMobile will be painted with Dry-Erase paint over this winter. All of the white surfaces will be Dry-Erase. See you in 2008!