By Jeff Glucker
Garage54 is a glorious corner of the Internet. It’s where a team of mad wrenches and fabricators in Russia attempt to do all sorts of stuff just to see if they can. From making wheels out of gears and using super glue as a head gasket to building an 8-wheeled Fiat and more, the Garage54 crew is entertaining in a unique way. And the latest stunt involves what I think is a Lada Samara.
The car has been chopped up, shortened, lifted, and then an exterior roll hoop has been added. The goal? To do a forward roll and drive away.
Kamil Kaluski
Speedycop had a video where he took a FWD car, cut it in half behind the driver’s seat, and then strapped the back half to the front half so that the pieces were roof-to-roof with the back wheels facing up when the front wheels were down. The car would go forward and then he would stab the brakes, and the car would roll over on itself because of the shortened length and raised center of gravity. I can’t find the video, but did locate this grab from the Wayback Machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130409040759/http://www.break.com/index/halfcar17.html
There used to be another video that showed up as “next up” while watching the half-car video. I don’t remember whether it was Speedycop or someone unrelated, but there was a car with a similar hoop construction to what Garage 54 did above (except I seem to remember it being constructed of round tubing), built to perform the same stunt.
That’s a great trick!
In case the guys are out of ideas, here is a video for further inspiration:
(While the sports of gymwheel never really took off, and the aesthetics are not really convincing to me, the athletic performance, balance, strength, is way up there – changing the direction of yourself and tens of kilograms mid-swing, in posture, without grunting is an achievement in my book!)