Two Williams Lake, B.C men are auctioning off their motorized log car for a good cause.
The vehicle, which has won a Guinness World Record, was created on a lark by Bryan Reid Sr., who founded Pioneer Log Homes and stared in the TV show Timber Kings. Reid was inspired to build the car after visiting Arizona’s Barrett-Jackson Luxury Car Auction in 2014. After watching thousands of cars being auctioned off, the idea just came to him.
“Sooner or later it comes to ‘why don’t you build a log car,'” he told the CBC in 2014.
Reid worked with mechanic Gerald Overtona, a high school friend, and Louis Horschel, a former client to help turn his idea into a reality. The three used their different expertise to turn a cedar log into a fast-moving sports car. They used parts from a Mazda RX-8, but opted to go for an electric engine since it seemed too complicated to use a traditional gas engine in a wood car.
Christened the “The Cedar Rocket,” the car took about a year to build and was clearly a work of love — according to the CBC, it got a $100,000 paint job. While Reid is proud of the vehicle’s craftsmanship, he still gives a lot of credit to Mother Nature for its good looks.
“It has a lot of character, not just a round car. It has fins that are actually part of the original tree,” Reid told the CBC. “Mother Nature created it, we just cleaned it up.”
In 2016, the car was taken for its first drive, which also happened to be its showing for the Guinness World Records judges. Reid drove the vehicle, which he said didn’t handle quite as smoothly as a regular car, around a traditional race track.
“There was a lot of shaking,” Reid said.
The car, which is estimated to weigh 1,000 kg, was required to go around the track twice within an hour and reach a speed of 50 km/h. The log managed to get up to 75 km/h, securing the record.
After spending a few years being toured around the circuit and appearing on TV, the Cedar Rocket will be auctioned off for charity at the 2018 Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction. All proceeds will be donated to veterans groups in Canada and the U.S., including the Canadian Legion.
If you’re interested in owning your own personal log car, they will be accepting bids online as well as in person. However, Reid is hoping to get six or seven figures for it, so you better be willing to shell out a significant amount of cash.
While Reid and his friends had a lot of fun building the car, it’s unlikely Pioneer Log Cabins will be producing them regularly.
“This is number 0001 and I think it will stay at that.”
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