A dragster-style custom car designed as a casket on wheels was recently auctioned off for $28,750 and went viral because of its unconventional look.

Inspired by the Drag-U-La coffin car featured in a 1965 episode of the television series The Munsters, this unusual vehicle features a custom box-frame chassis and an 8’ fiberglass casket as bodywork. It’s not actually a functional casket, as it was modified to house a driver’s seat behind the rear axle, but it certainly looks like one. Complete with wide rear wheels wrapped in racing slicks, organ-style vertical exhaust pipes, and lantern-style lighting, this coffin car looks more like a movie prop than an actual road-worthy vehicle, but it is in fact registered in New York as a 1928 Ford and has a valid license plate.

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An Argentinian man became an overnight sensation in South America after reportedly barricading himself inside a car dealership and refusing to leave without the truck he had made an advance payment for.

Abelardo Usandivaras, aka the “gaucho of Salta’, has been making international news headlines for over two weeks and has become somewhat of a living symbol of the common man’s struggle against the shady practices of car dealerships. The middle-aged man from Metán, in Salta, arrived in Buenos Aires with his family at the beginning of April, and went straight to the dealership that was supposed to deliver his new much-needed truck. After failing to get the answers he needed and finding himself unable to get in touch with the owner, Usandivaras barricaded himself inside the dealership, refusing to leave without the truck he was promised, or at least the downpayment he had made for it. His story quickly went viral, and Abelardo’s struggle became a hot topic in all of Latin America.

Usandivaras, a horse breeder and advisor from Metán, decided to buy a new truck last year, and after getting in touch with a dealership in Buenos Aires, he decided to sell his old truck and make a downpayment for a new one. Everything went smoothly up to that point, but after paying the advance, he never heard back from the dealership. They had a 120-day delivery deadline, but he never got so much as an update, and whenever he got in touch, they just referred him to another department.

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A German engineering student spent 10 months modifying a toy car and turning it into an extremely fast vehicle capable of reaching speeds of up to 92.24 mph (148 km/h).

31-year-old Marcel Paul has always been fascinated by Bobby Cars, a type of toy car that was invented to help children learn to walk but that gained a cult following among downhill racing competitors during the 1990s. With 14 World Championships and 9 European Championships under his belt, Paul is one of the most successful riders in the history of this wacky sport, but to really cement his legacy, he decided to do something even more ambitious – create the world’s fastest rideable toy car. It took him 10 months to research, design and build the tiny speed demon, but he was able to smash through the old record of 88 mph on his first try.

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UK-based company Amalgam specializes in miniature models of iconic sports cars that feature all the features of their full-size inspiration down to the tiniest elements and have a price tag to match.

Founded in 1995 in Bristol, UK, Amalgam has built a reputation for building the most detailed miniature car replicas in the world. By maintaining close relationships with top manufacturers like Ferrari, Lamborghini, or Aston Martin, the company has access to the original CAD data and engineering drawings of the vehicles they replicate, as well as to their paint codes and color samples. Amalgam also uses high-resolution photos and digital scans to recreate each vehicle perfectly. Every one of the company’s 1:8 scale replicas takes between 250 and 450 hours of painstaking work to complete, hence the eye-watering price tags which can reach $30,000, depending on the model.

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The Swan Car is regarded as one of the craziest, most eccentric vehicles ever to hit the streets and one look at it is enough to explain why.

The Swan Car was commissioned in the early 1900s by Robert Nicholl ‘Scotty’ Matthewson, a wealthy British engineer living in Calcutta. It’s never been clear why he was so obsessed with swans – maybe because he lived in Swan Park, next to Calcutta Zoo, which was home to many beautiful swans – but he loved the birds enough to travel to England in 1909 and placed a very special with JW Brooks and Company of Lowestoft, Suffolk – a swan-shaped car. The following year, the unique vehicle arrived in Calcutta and immediately became the talk of the town. It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen, or would ever see again for that matter, and came with some intriguing features.

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The Amber Yantar, a new electric vehicle prototype from Russia, has been dubbed the world’s ugliest car because of its bizarre, unattractive design.

Car prototypes usually have eye-catching designs that capture viewers’ imagination. Even if the vehicle that reaches the production line turns out to be very different, or if it never actually goes into production, prototypes are an exciting way of showcasing a car brand’s vision of the near future. But that isn’t always the case. Take, for example, the new Amber Yantar, an EV prototype designed by Avtotor, a Russian carmaker based in Kaliningrad, in collaboration with the Moscow Polytechnic Institute. It was revealed to the public less than a week ago, but it has already become the laughing stock of the entire internet, with photos of its unflattering exterior doing the rounds on social media.

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Toyota recently teamed up with Japanese artist Masumi Yamaguchi to celebrate the return of the iconic Land Cruiser 70 SUV to the market in a unique way.

SUVs aren’t known for being the lightest of cars, but the one created by Masumi Yamaguchi is probably the lightest ever made. Even though it is a 1:1 model of the legendary Land Cruiser 70, it can easily by lifted by just two people. That’s because this special SUV is actually made of styrofoam parts sculpted and assembled by Yamaguchi. Everything from the body of the car to the windows and the tires is made out of styrofoam and then painted to create the illusion of a real vehicle. The only things that give it away are the reflectionless windows and the unusually matte paint.

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Chinese car manufacturer Chery came up with an unusual marketing pitch to promote its new eQ7 electric crossover – building a tower of cars to show how durable its aluminum body is.

China’s electric vehicle production is firing on all cylinders these days, and manufacturers are coming up with all kinds of marketing strategies to get a leg up on the competition. Take Chinese company Chery, whose new eQ7 electric car hit the local market last month. It is said to strike a good quality/price balance, has an intriguing design, and has an official driving range of 412-512 km on a fully charged battery. But the same can be said about many of its competitors, so in order to make it stand out, Chery decided to focus on the strength of its LFS aluminum body, by creating a tower of no less than seven eQ7s.

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A group of car enthusiasts in Australia recently drove a 1978 Toyota Landcruiser seven kilometers on the bottom of the ocean, setting a new world record for the longest underwater drive.

On the morning of July 29th, a bright orange Toyota LandCruiser drove into the northern Australian Sea to the cheers of dozens gathered at Mandorah Beach for a historic attempt. The 1978 “rust bucket” had been bought online by a group of friends for around $5,000 and converted into an insulated electric vehicle able to drive underwater, at depths of several meters. Dubbed the “Mud Crab”, the old short-wheelbase four-wheel drive buggy was meant to cover a distance of 4.3 miles (7km), between Mandorah Beach and Darwin Harbour, and thus set a new world record for the longest distance covered by a car driven underwater.

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18Wheels Inc., an aptly-named company in Finland, has developed a strange-looking electric 18-wheel all-terrain vehicle that it claims is vastly superior to the common ATV.

The millipede-inspired design of the 18Wheels Inc. all-terrain vehicle is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Basically, it consists of a snowmobile-like body and a set of 18 small wheels each with its own individual suspension system. One of the core ideas of the project was to make this unusual-looking vehicle soil friendly, so the wheels are specifically small so that they don’t damage the soil by leaving huge tire marks on it. The unique suspension system provides a special trajectory of movement and a much smoother ride over all types of rough terrain, which can’t really be said about traditional ATVs.

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Japanese metal processing company Yamaguchi Seisakusho has been getting a lot of attention for showcasing its capabilities by creating a very detailed wireframe car that looks almost rendered in augmented reality.

If you’ve ever played mobile video games like the widely popular Pokemon GO, you probably know a little about augmented reality or AR for short. It’s a technology that visually enhances the real world with computer-generated images, basically overlaying digital elements onto real-life environments. Looking at the photo of this white wireframe car, you’d be tempted to think that it was the product of augmented reality, but it was actually painstakingly created out of metal wire. Photos of it recently went viral on Japanese social media, because people just couldn’t believe it was real.

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The Xian Mangia is a fully functional electric double-cabin truck that not only costs under $3,000, but can also be shipped right to your doorstep.

A few years back, we wrote about the world’s cheapest electric car, the Changli Nemeca, a petite box on wheels that cost just $930 and could be delivered straight to the client’s home. Well, apparently, the idea of a super-affordable electric vehicle that could be delivered at home rather than be picked up from a dealership stuck, because there is now a variety of different EVs to choose from, including a double-cabin truck that costs less than a midrange PC. The Xian Mangia can be ordered online from Chinese shopping giant Alibaba, for just $2,920 and will arrive at your door in 15 – 20 days.

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A Swedish electric vehicle manufacturer hopes to become the IKEA of small EVs by shipping its cars as individual parts that can be assembled at their final destination.

Luvly, a Swedish start-up specializing in small and affordable electric vehicles, has announced plans to ship its tiny cars as flat packs to be assembled at their final destination. The company claims that this unusual model will allow it to fit 20 of its cars into a container that would otherwise only have room for 4 assembled vehicles, thus lowering transportation costs considerably. However, the Swedish manufacturer clarified that, unlike IKEA furniture, its electric vehicles are not meant for home assembly. Instead, the flat packs will end up at micro-factories where they will be quickly put together by specialized staff to ensure complete safety.

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A Vietnamese architecture student and diehard fan of The Dark Knight spent six months building his very own Batpod with the help of a team of friends.

Born in 1998, Nguyen Dac Chung was just a child when Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight hit cinemas, but the movie made such a big impact on him that he grew up dreaming of one day driving his own Batmobile and Batpod on the streets of his native Hanoi. He fulfilled half of that dream in 2020, when he built a functional replica of the Tumbler, Batman’s impressive Batmobile from the Dark Knight series, and earlier this month he completed his goal by unveiling a cool DIY Batpod as well.

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Malaysian social media has been abuzz with the story of a young well-off couple who recently bought a Mercedes SUV as a present for their 5-year-old daughter to motivate her to go to school.

Earlier this month, Malaysian businesswoman Farhana Zahra posted a TikTok video asking her daughter, Fatima, what she wanted as a birthday present, to which the young girl answered that she wanted either a green Mercedes G Wagon or a BMW. In the same video, Farhana makes the girl promise that she will go to school if she gets what she wants and then they seal the deal with a pinky shake. Apparently, Farhana and her husband had been having problems convincing Fatima to go to school, because she hadn’t turned five yet, and they used this opportunity to persuade her. Just like our parents used to do back in the day…

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