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Montrealer tricks police with a fake car made of snow

Realistic car sculpture made of snow on the city street Photo courtesy of Simon Laprise

While winter may make some of us want to hide indoors with a blanket and a good book, for others, it brings out the inner prankster. Usually, the mischievous impulse finds expression in snowball ambushes or oversized snowmen, but this winter, a Montreal man decided to take things to the next level, building a snow car that actually tricked police into thinking it was real (and illegally parked).

Simon Laprise built the car after a huge snowfall as a practical joke on the snow plows, but it ended up getting the attention of the police instead. One police car called in another, presumably to help figure out what exactly was going on with the car. When they realized that the entire thing was snow, the officers wrote Laprise a “ticket” that said, in French, “You made our night.”

Two police cars next to the snow-sculpture car
Two police vehicles showed up to investigate the snow-car. [Credit: Maxime Tot]

The snow sculpture was so well made, it’s not hard to see why many would mistake it for a real car buried under a layer of snow. And to make it even more realistic, Laprise put a real windshield wiper that he’d found on the ground on the car’s windshield.

Laprise, who does design and fabrication work under the name Laprise Simon Designs, said he built the car just for fun. “It was a beautiful day,” he told Vice. “So I decided to do something out of the mountain of snow, to do a little joke to the snow guys, and have fun sculpting a car. It’s not my first one, just the first I do in the street on snow removal day.”

He wasn’t around when the police showed up, but he thought the ticket was “hilarious” and was even more pleased to see they had posted his “car” on social media and it had gone viral.

The snow plow eventually came and destroyed the car, but Laprise still has lots of material should the creative impulse strike again.

“To me snow is a great free material to sculpt anything out of.”

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