A man in Arizona builds his shrunken cars out of refrigerators, but you would never know it by looking at them. In Washington state, a teacher built his car from a boat, and there is no mistaking it. And in Ghana, a student built a car that looks like a ramshackle DeLorean — and if you guessed that he made it with junkyard scraps, you would be right.
Their creations turn heads, bring smiles and get them around town, all because they see promise in materials most of us would never put to use.
Kelvin Odartei Cruickshank, who is 19 and lives in Accra, Ghana's capital city, has had a passion for building machines since he was 10. "I started by building prototype or micro-machines such as vacuum cleaners, robots, cars, a helicopter," he said in interviews that were conducted via e-mail and WhatsApp.
He moved on to bigger machines and got to work building, from scratch, a two-person car made from scrap materials that cost around $200. It took three years to complete. Cruickshank used scrap metal and parts not normally used in cars.
"I didn't have money, so I had to do labor jobs and go about collecting scrap materials to make the car," he said. Sometimes, he said, when he would get enough money to eat, he would use it to buy material to make the car instead.
He used motor parts, shipping container panels and iron rods to build its body.
A wooden dashboard adorns the interior, and motorcycle shocks round out each corner of the car. A motorbike engine powers it along the streets of Accra.
The car may not look like much, but Cruickshank counts it as a success: "It works just the way I wanted it." As a student, he said his goal over the next five years was to "advance my knowledge by educating myself more and to bring more inventions to reality."