Dangerous Obsession

Spending Money You Don't Actually Have

The urge is back with a vengeance...

Every so often, I get an compulsion to build another artcar.  The last time it surfaced was in 2009, and I was dead set on using an old school bus frame to build a rolling Viking longboat.

Sanity's eventual return and lack of ready cash usually keep me from getting past the planning stages, but this time, I may have been bitten by the bug too deeply to give up...

See, I discovered the Blastolene Decoliner...

 

Imagine a self-propelled Airstream trailer with a flying bridge!  Fantastic!!

 

You can steer it from the cockpit, or connect the steering linkage and drive it from the roof!

This thing is a work of genius.  It's built on a GMC Motorhome chassis.  Using a front-wheel drive Olds Toronado engine, you eliminate the need to get the floorboards up and over the driveline.  You keep it really low to the ground!

No rear axles!  It's got bogie wheels like a tank!!

The builder, Randy Grubb, is a serious automotive artist and engineer.  He hand-hammered the aluminum over scratch-built wooden forms, put the whole thing together and even made the hand-blown glass portholes.  If I heard correctly, the cockpit's off an old 1950 White garbage truck.


Now, I wouldn't want to try and copy the Decoliner (as if I could...) but this idea of a dual-drive fun-wagon suits me a lot better than trying to build a 14 foot tall Viking Longboat on an old Blue Bird bus frame!

Since the GMC Motorhome was the base for the EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle, my initial thought was to re-create that.  After all, you never know when you might have to invade Czechoslovakia...

Nah, been done.  Not artsy enough.

I'm thinking about an Urban Howdah.  Howdat?  Lika Dis:

Only with a lot less elephant.

This requires a lot more thought...  More later!!