March 11, 2014 • 39 mins
Dwarf car cruisers are scaled-down classic cars built for the street. The tiny street cruisers built by Ernie Adams are still around today - but where? Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the Wheel, under the Hood and beyond with
car stuff from house Stuff Works dot Com. Everybody, welcome
to the podcast. I'm Scoff and I'm Ben Bully, and
we've got a topic that is really if you want
to get really technical about it. It's part two. Yeah. Yeah.
(00:22):
This is a listener suggestion from one of our Free
Court writers, right yeah, Robert s which we talked about
in the Legends Cars podcast, and I didn't misspeak there
at his Legends Cars and Uh, Robert suggested in that
podcast we talked about dwarf cars, and my assumption is
that today's topic is where he was really going with
(00:43):
this thing. I think he really wanted to hear about
dwarf car cruisers instead of dwarf car racing. And we
we covered dwarf car racing in the first episode months ago.
It seems like it was a long time ago now,
and now we're going to kind of make good on
the on the whole promise to Robert s Uh to
cover dwarf cars by covering dwarf car cruisers, which I
(01:03):
think everybody's gonna find interesting because these things are fascinating. Ben. Yeah,
and I I wonder if we have any listeners who
haven't heard about this before. If you haven't, you are
in for a treat, ladies and gentlemen, especially if you're
a fan of classic cars the same way that Scott
and I are. You know, we're both fans of these
sands of these fans of classic cars and general fans
(01:26):
of everything about dwarf cars racing all that. It all
comes into one story here with the dwarf car cruisers,
and it has a lot to do with the guy
named Ernie Adams that we're gonna talk about, And of
course it has all all to do with Ernie Adams really,
um as did dwarf car racing, and um I guess
we're gonna let's start at the beginning, Ben, how about that.
I mean, we don't need to go into a full
(01:46):
recap of, you know, the whole dwarf car racing history
or anything like that, but Ernie had a place in
dwarf car racing history that we do need to cover
because he's really the originator of the whole thing, right, Yeah,
Ernie and guy named Darren Schmaltz are the founders I
guess would be fair to call them of the dwarf
car racing, although it wasn't really called a dwarf car
(02:11):
um until the eighties the first the first dwarf car
comes along. N right, Yeah, that's right. He had built
one car that was kind of an odd ball car
in that, you know, there were decades between when the
first one is produced and the second one is produced.
So let'll tell you what. Let's just kind of go
through Ernie Adams. Uh. And I know this sounds like history,
(02:31):
but it's gonna go quick. Okay, it's Ernie. I'm gonna
say Ernie Adams life. But but really we're just breaking
it down into a way that I saw it laid
out on his website, which is uh. I think there's
one called Dwarf Car Promotions and then there's one called
Dwarf Car Museum and you can find you know, those
online just a simple keyword search and you can find
all this information there. But I'll kind of lay it
out for you quickly, just kind of cut to the
(02:52):
chase on this one. Really. Um. So, in the early years,
Ernie came from a well, he had a long time
fascination with cars, which started in grade school and he
built his first wooden car, which was really just kind
of a crate box with the steering wheel and you know, um,
I guess he had peanut butter jar lids for tail lights.
You know that kind of pull push type roadster that.
Um he had his mom dragging him around town in
(03:13):
this thing when he was really young in grade school.
And I guess the family ben This is kind of
an interesting little side note. The family lived um near
the junkyard, the town junkyard, and they kind of learned that,
you know what, some of the stuff isn't all that bad.
Let's let's take that and we can we can sell
it in a garage sale or whatever, and we can
reuse some of it, repurpose it. And Ernie learned these
(03:34):
really valuable skills by doing that. And he learned that,
you know, I can make something out of nothing, really
make something out of what other people call trash. I
can make something that people really want or what I
really want. And uh And not only that they sold
things to make uh um. They would they would like
gather things from this junkyard and they would they would
make like um, they would make their own things. They
(03:55):
would sell them. They would reason to raise money to create,
uh well, not to create, but to to get Christmas
money for the year. It was a very purposeful Um,
I don't know, have better to say that. Then maybe
they were they were able to take something or take
nothing and make something out. It was it was sort
of a side business for them for a while. And
(04:15):
I think I'm really glad that you mentioned the stuff
about Christmas because it's important to understand that for Ernie
and his family, when Ernie was growing up, this was
I will say, maybe this was fifty fun in a hobby,
but it was also a necessity for them. Economics. Yeah,
I mean, this is the Depression era, you know, and
(04:37):
there's a lot of hard times, and the family's grown
up or he's grown up in this family and Harvard, Nebraska,
so it's uh, Midwest America, you know, typical story, I
guess you know, the family fell in difficult times. They
make do with what they can, and this is something
that he was able to do. Is is able to
make things out of nothing. Really, it's also very important
to know this will come up later in our story. Uh,
(04:58):
this is where Ernie first cuts his teeth in fabrication
and bending and shaping metal exactly exactly, and this kind
of led him to let's say, well, let's skip ahead
just a little bit, so you know, he's got all
this background, right, and he creates his first dwarf car,
which is a it was built in nineteen sixty five.
And I got some pretty good notes on this one,
(05:18):
and we weren't going to in depth as as on
other cars as we do in this one. But his
first dwarf car, which is kind of an odd ball
car because again it was built in nineteen sixty five.
It was a Chevy two door sedan and the term
really didn't come until nineteen as you mentioned, I think.
But this, uh, this car that they call the Grandpa
Dwarf now because it's been renamed the Grandpa Dwarf because
(05:41):
it's the first, of course. Yeah, and patriarch and he
worked on this for for years, for about three years
if you start counting from when he began gathering the materials, right, yeah, exactly,
it goes back to a nineteen sixty two. He started
pulling stuff. And when we say pulling stuff, you guys
were literally talking about finding whatever scrap he could. Yeah,
(06:04):
and here's just an example of what he used. Now.
He used an eighteen horsepower Wisconsin engine for the for
the motor because you can't you can't obviously put Chevy
motor into this. It's a scale down Classic. Doesn't say
exactly what scale. Now we know that, um, you know
the Dwarf cars, the Legends cars, you know, the ones
that we see racing, those are five eighth scale replicas
of like thirties and forties cars. But I don't know
(06:25):
if this car is specifically five eighths or if it's
just kind of an eyeballed scaled down Classic version. Right.
I do have the specs on the size. It's uh
nine ft long, it's only fifty three inches high and
as a seventy three inch wheelbase, which uh, just just
for a spoiler alert there. That's not exactly a standard thing, No,
(06:46):
you know, definitely not. And you know, I started to
get into kind of a short list of things that
he had. You had mentioned that he gathered up a
lot of so I mentioned the engine. Um, he was
using a homemade hack saw that he had built out
of a chair frame. So cool again, he built his
own tools. In a lot of cases, he used a
hammer and chisel. Um, he has been hit an arc welder,
which was probably something he was just learning to use,
(07:07):
I mean early on, and he used nine refrigerators for
the steel. Now used you know, the doors mainly, I believe,
is what he was he was going after he said,
you know, refrigerator doors are kind of his his staple
of steel in all of his cars all the way
through present day, because it's a it's a super accessible way.
Well especially you know, at that time, it was a
(07:28):
lot easier to find just a steel refrigerator that have
been discarded and he um funny story, this was still
a learning experience for him. He didn't have the know
how to make what are called compound bends, which is
a skill you need to have when you're making your
own cars. So instead, the story goes, he just used
(07:50):
the bends that were already there in the refrigerator pieces,
so he would find I guess he would kind of
like look for the part of the refrigerator that would
fit car and then cut it. Well, that's probably why
it took nine refrigerators to do this, because he needed
certain parts for certain things. And and we'll find out that,
you know later. A lot of people describe the original
(08:10):
Dwarf car, the one that we're talking at, the Dwarf cruiser,
I should say, as in quote somewhat crude and in
the way it appears because later as we get into
some of the more of these cruisers he get he's very,
very refined and it becomes very complex in the way
that he builds these things. So you know, this this
original one again, I'll get off this one pretty soon.
But um, it originally had solid rubber tires because they
(08:32):
just weren't available at that in that size at that time.
But later they did change them to twelve inch pneumatic tires,
so it's a little more comfortable ride. Um. He also
later added a vinyl top and I think a two
cylinder engine, a two cylinder thirteen horsepower engine, so he
swapped that one out for the Wisconsin engine that he
had in their prior UM it had a cloth interior,
bucket seats, the windows operate, you know, so they can
(08:54):
roll them up and down. Um. And it's still runs
and drives today. It's still kept in in running order
in street legal conditions. So you can go to Ernie
Adams Museum and whereas in a Maracopa, Arizona, I believe,
and you can see the Grandpa Dwarf alongside of the
other five Dwarfs that we're going to talk about. Yeah,
now I'll go ahead and tell you they probably won't
let you drive it. Well you can ask. You might
(09:17):
as well ask on that. I mean, he may take
it out and show you what it what it'll do, though,
because all these things run and drive, and it seems
like he often takes them out and and kind of
stretches their legs a little bit, you know, because it's
bad for these things to sit around and not be driven. Um.
So okay, so in his history and I know we
spent a little bit too much time on that one,
but it's strange and that, you know, you have to
go from the early years to the first dwarf car,
(09:38):
then back to dwarf racing, and then back to dwarf
cruises again. So we're on a dwarf dwarf car and boy,
it's tough for me to say. Been dwarf car racing
and um, the first dwarf race cars appeared in late
nineteen seventy nine, early nineteen eighty and the idea came
from watching he was I think he's watching a motorcycle
sidecar racing in Phoenix with a and yeah, he was
(10:00):
watching it with Darren Schmaltz and uh. As they were leaving,
they started critiquing the race itself and uh Ernie specifically said, well,
these three wheeled racers are a little too slow in
the corners. What would happen if we added a fourth wheel?
See Ben, Now here's my here's my my theory about
this whole thing. These two guys are sitting around the
(10:21):
racetrack watching a motorcycle side car race, having a couple
of beers, you know, maybe a corn dog or something
like that what they call him out there, and and
uh on sixty six cozy dog, having a cozy dog
and uh and they're just relaxing, you know, at the
on the grandstands, and they're kind of just big stuff talking,
you know, like I wouldn't make this really cool. Here's
what I would do with this series. This is the
way I would make these different. And then they started
(10:43):
to kind of put this together, like, well, maybe we
could really do this. Yeah, it sounds like a big
sort of a cocktail napkin type conversation. It kind of does,
But it turned out really well, as a lot of
times those do. And uh and the thought was that
the three wheel race cars or racers rather these uh
these uh sidecar motorcycle side cars were too slow in
the corners for them, because remember these are the original
(11:05):
side cars. They're not the ones that we see now.
They're exceedingly fast, um, the real, real low wide ones.
But he said, you know, four wheels would be a
little better for cornering speed something like that, and the
car body would add appeal for the crowd. So what
we're talking about really is small cars. Yeah, and I'm
glad you said it that way. Just another detail. I
(11:25):
think they talked about the making an oval track because
the sidecar races at that time we're not in the oval.
I didn't know that and they and so so this
is just a this is just an insight into how
broadly they were speaking, because they said, you know, I
can see it so clearly, Scott. It's like if you
and I were sitting there watching race and then you said,
(11:48):
we know, a problem is the three wheels, and I said, yeah,
and the race track isn't even oval. What the heck, man,
I think we could do better than this. We need
to change this this way and it would be much better,
So let's do it. Yeah, And they did. Yeah, they had.
They had a challenge to each other. Um eventually, after
they're after talking such mess as they would say in
(12:09):
some parts of Tennessee, uh Schmaltz said, well, you know what, Ernie,
if you build one of these, then I will build
one too. So they did, and in nineteen seventy nine
early nineteen eighty they built a couple of these cars
that were the first two. And then by nineteen eighty three,
which is just three years later, it had kind of
caught on enough that the County Fair was actually sponsoring
(12:30):
a race in Prescott, Arizona, and they had twelve cars
registered for the first race. And I guess it was
a big success because people kind of stuck with it.
They said, you know, this really works, let's hang onto it.
And then here's what happened. Then. Remember this is where
we go back to our other story, and this will
fill in the gap between the dwarf race cars and
the dwarf car cruisers, because this is when the Lows
(12:52):
Motor speedway guys got involved and the Lows Motor speedway
guys and the two involved in there. I've got in
my notes here in just a second off find it. Oh,
Humpy Wheeler and Elliott Forbes Robinson right at the Charlotte
Motor Speedway and they decided that they were gonna start
up this thing that they didn't know it was going
to call it the Legends Car series yet, but they
(13:13):
were going to start up something that was like scaled
down cars that were built for people who didn't have
a whole lot of money but wanted to race. And
so it's kind of an inexpensive way to get into racing.
And we've told that whole story about you know how
they did this. Uh, they bought four cars I think,
and they modified him a little bit and added some
added some fenders I think, and uh, they they wanted
(13:34):
to have a fiber glass version. They tweaked the originals,
just made it work for their own series. Right, So
they this whole thing came about. And then I think
it was around when the original Legends car actually appeared first,
like April I think of ninety two when the first
Legends car was revealed at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Um,
(13:54):
and I think did that change later to Lowis Motor
Speedway or something like that. I think the name did
change and leave it right as I think I got
the that's the order. I think it went from Charlotte
to Lowe's. Um. But then okay, so Ernie in the
early nineties kind of gets out of the whole thing.
He says, you know, I'm done building these race cars
because you know, it's been taking over and someone else
is still building the original Dwarf race cars. But I
(14:15):
think they've moved to Oh, I want to say it's, um,
it's somewhere in Arizona. I want to say Phoenix, Arizona,
so that I think it's I think following Phoenix and Prescott. Okay,
so I think they're still building the original Dwarf race
cars in Phoenix, Arizona. But um, Ernie kind of went
out on his own and he said, you know what,
I'm done with this. I've sold the company or whatever,
(14:35):
and I'm ready to move on. And he was probably,
i mean, even at that time, getting a little bit old,
he's an older guy. Um. He said, well, let's what
my really what my passion would be, What what I
really want to do is I would like to start
building some street legal classic cars, just scale down classics,
you know, the I mean the ones that you typically
think of you know, the thirty four Ford or the
thirty nine Chevy or whatever. And he's got a whole
(14:57):
list of cars here that we'll talk about. But Um,
he started building these dwarf car cruisers that he called
his masterpieces. Ah. Yes, and he's not calling them that sarcastically.
Before we go on, I have to ask you because
we're gonna start talking a lot about what these cars
look like. And Scott, we're going back to Ernie Adam's
(15:19):
decision to uh get out of dwarf car racing and
go just to building his masterpieces. Earlier, Scott, before the break,
we mentioned that he had this list sort of of
dream cars and the first car that he goes to
um after his racing time days, uh is a thirty
(15:40):
nine Chevy Saturday night cruiser. Yeah, he's got a thirty
nine Chevy Sedan. I hadn't heard the term Saturday night cruiser.
That's cool then, But now the funny thing about this
is that now and understandably why he would go to
this one, he also owns a full size thirty nine Chevy.
Oh yeah, and that's why he did this one. He said, Well,
I like that one so much, I'm gonna min nicket
(16:00):
for one of my one of my masterpieces here, which
is what he first calls these. Um. So it's really
his second dwarf car cruiser, but his first masterpiece. And
he'll build many many more after this, so I'm not
many million, were but a few more after this um
hand too, Yeah, exactly, all by hand. And um it
took him two and a half years to complete the
thirty nine Chevy Sitans. He can see these are these
(16:22):
are lengthy projects. I mean it's him working every single
day in his barn. I mean he builds everything. And
when we say everything, I mean he builds the spokes
and the wheels. He builds the wheels themselves of course,
held the steering wheel. Yeah. And he doesn't have a
bunch of space age tools either. There's only fabrication tools.
Are what a torch? And he had a welder, a
(16:43):
wire feed welder, Yeah exactly. And and he builds. I
mean you can watch the build process and a couple
of different videos here and there. Oh speaking to that.
Can I just mention this right now as we go
down this list of four or five vehicles here, UM,
I have posted something that the Car Stuff Show UM
blog site. I can see the website and uh it's
a blog post and there's a couple of videos of
(17:04):
Ernie and of his cars, and I think it was
Vimeo that did a couple of video of videos, and
there's a YouTube video and it just kind of teases, uh,
you know, a potential possible coming, um, like a full
presentation that they're going to do about Ernie Adams. And
I kind of poked around for that. I couldn't find
that version. But what it did find was that there's
a few different CDs on on Ernie's site that shows
(17:27):
how he builds these things. And you can't watch them
for free. You have to you have to pay because
these are you know, CDs will be sent to you. Yeah,
they're full length. They're about twelve dollars each and you
can watch any one of these. Are three of them.
There's one that's called Ernie Builds a Dwarf, which is
I think it's about thirty eight minutes and these are
an HD by the way, so they're brand new. Um.
The next one is called Half Moon Road the Ernie
(17:49):
Adams Story, which is the whole background story that's about
fifty five minutes long. And there's one called Root sixty
six Arizona Fun Run and that's Ernie cruising on Roots
fifty six in one of his cruisers. So um, that
one's about twenty four minutes long. All those are about
twelve bucks. They're on the on the site. I'm not
selling them or anything like that, so don't get the
wrong impression. But that's the only way you're going to
(18:09):
really get to see Ernie build him outside of going
to Maricopa and visiting Ernie and watching him build one, which,
by the way, I don't think looking at I mean
looking at all the stuff I've seen about Ernie and
and hearing everything about him. He's such a nice guy. Yeah,
he seems pretty cool. He might just say, yeah, come on,
he might say step out to the barn and help
me build with this fender or what. Especially if you
(18:30):
meet him at one of the local waffle houses, he
is like did you read about that? Did? He is
famous at waffle houses throughout Arizona as well as his
dwarf car. Cruiser is his favorite restaurant, right, and every
everybody knows him at all the waffle houses in Arizona.
That's such a weird thing to be known for. But
you know, that's uh, that's just what he is. He's
a he's a simple guy. He's got simple pleasures. Right. Oh.
(18:51):
What we can say though about the kind of things
that you will see on the CDs of his fabrication
construction process, uh, is that, at least in the case
of the thirty nine Chevy, he starts with photographs of
the full size that it already has, and he takes
some measurements, uh from these photos, and then he starts
(19:11):
looking for donor cars, which still I still love that
mentality where he says, well, if I don't need to, um,
I don't need to make something out of whole cloth,
because a lot of stuff that people might throw away
nowadays in the modern age is still perfectly usable. Yeah,
he said donor cars, but I think he meant donor items.
(19:32):
Maybe it is probably better, probably because I still you know,
you know what I read, Bend, I read that he
can He's still he's built six of these dwarf cruisers
that we're gonna talk about. He has he has still
used refrigerator doors for every single dashboard and every single
car he's ever built, because he loves the metal that
isn't a refrigerator door. It's just for some reason, he said,
(19:53):
it's the best metal. It bends the way you wanted to,
it stays where you put it. It's the perfect metal
for him. So he says, you know that one. I
know when you when you said donor cars, maybe maybe
an item or two comes from one, but he adapts
it in some way. He builds everything from scratch now
including the molding. Well yeah, when it comes to body.
But you know that thirty nine Chevy has drive train
(20:14):
from a nineteen seventy two Toyota. Yeah, so he's got
some unusual drive trains, and you know, I mean, we'll
talk about that also as we go through, because there's
a few here that will surprise you. I think, um,
like the Yeah, the Toyota drive trains are surprising. All right.
So we we've talked a little bit about the thirty
nine Chevy Sedan. By the way, that one, a lot
of people say, it's in quotes here a handsome car.
A lot of people really like that one. And that
(20:36):
was his first real attempt at a what we call masterpiece,
or what he calls a master Yeah, kind of the
most complete finished version of a dwarf car. You can
imagine really weighs much more than the Grandpa to the
Grandpa Dwarf, that Chevy was nine hundred pounds and this
one is seventeen hundred and seven. I mean, as far
as complexity goes, the thirty nine Chevy Sedan, it looks
(20:59):
like it looks if if somebody wasn't standing next to it,
you wouldn't realize that that's a dwarf car. Absolutely, the
twenty eight Grandpa Dwarf, although it looks correct, it has
more of the look of, let's say one of those
cars you would find like on the on the kid
tracks that see your point or something, you know, the
kind of kids can get in and drive on the rail,
that that type of car has that appearance. And maybe
it's just because of the style of vehicle it is well,
(21:20):
but you can like, you can see some cool stuff
where he has I think it's the thirty nine right.
There aren't there photos of the thirty nine, the full
scale and the Dwarfs together. There are, Yes, these are
great photos, by the way, I mean when him standing
there and that gives you a true scale of what's
going on, because the thirty nine Sedan is pretty big.
The Chevy Sedan rather, but um, when he's standing next
(21:42):
to them, that's when you get a true appreciation for
the scale of these things, how small they are, because
these are these are waste high cars, and they're like
they're there may be tall at the most uh so,
so it's the remarkably small, remarkably well done, remarkably detailed.
And the next one that he built was a forty
two Ford convertible. So he took a convertible project, which
is amazing to you know. I mean, of course, how
(22:04):
hard is it for this guy to build a convertible
system for a car when he's building a full car.
Really Um, Now, he was I guess inspired or prompted
by others to keep building these cruisers. Once he built
the thirty nine Chevy, they said, well, clearly you're really
good at this. You've got amazing skills. Keep going with
us as long as you can. So he decided to
build a forty two for convertible and it's forty six
(22:26):
inches high. It's baby blue. I think it goes by
the name of gem I think is that one. He
calls it huge hit. People love that car. Then he
went on to build a car that I'll tell you
then This is my least favorite of all of them.
I think Hillbildy. Now, just to give an idea, Now,
he takes years, like two and a half three years
to build the other cars. He built this one in
(22:47):
something like three months. Now, I mean, I know he
he must love it. I mean, that's the way. That's
why he did it. But they say that you have
to see it to believe it because it was inspired
by a car that he saw the show in Casta Grande, Arizona. Uh,
And it took three months to build. That required several
antiques to complete the build. So he's taking antiques of
other kinds like milk jugs and um, looks like he's
(23:08):
got old bird houses and stuff like that attached to it.
It's uh, I don't know. It's kind of like the
Beverly Hillbillies type car sort of it. It is similar
and a lot of that. According to and this is
from one of his proper websites. When he was in
Cassa Grande, he met a guy named Zeke who already
had to Hillbilly model. AI's so I think he kind
(23:29):
of he kind of became infatuated with the aesthetic of this.
And I don't think you're off base at all to
call it kind of a Beverly Hillbillies car, because that's
sort of what it's supposed to be. It's still got
a two cylinder own and motor um and or it
did originally, right, they switched it over to a big
(23:50):
four cylinder. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with whopping thirteen horse power. Yeah,
that's right from an American Austin. So they did swap
that one. So he does a lot of motor swapping
and things like that. I think he might refine these
a little bit as we go, Like remember from the
hard rubber tires to the pneumatic tires and stuff like that.
But um, if you have three different horns, I would guess, yeah,
that's that's a good example. Then they're probably all mounted
(24:12):
to the to the to the hood zone. So yeah,
do you like this one? Um? I like it. I
don't think if I had to pick one, yeah, uh,
this would not be the one that I picked. Is
my favorite. It's more of a to me. Um, to
be absolutely candid, especially in comparison to some of the
other ones. This is this is a little bit more
(24:33):
art than it is car. That's kind of the way
I felt as well, because it's just I mean, if
you look at it, and you do have to see
it to believe it, I mean it's uh, it's it's
on the art car type of type of vehicle line,
I guess. And you know, there's just stuff welded to
it all over the place, like I mentioned milk cans
and bird houses and I don't know, horns that you
mentioned as a stove and as a heating stove in
(24:53):
the suitcase for a trunk of course, you know, things
like that. There's just a lot of rust and clutter
on this car. And I know that's the style, this
hillbilly car style. I guess it's kind of like, Um,
you know, there's the rat rod style, there's the there's
the classic rod style, there's the hillbilly style. I guess.
I don't know. I've this car carward. Look. Um, this
car would look just as just as normal in um
(25:19):
in you know, nineteen thirties or forties Appalachia as it
would at burning Man today. Um it has a moonshine
still on it, which I you know, I'm not. I'm
not a police officer or a lawyer myself. I don't
know how that how that interacts with open container laws
and that's an authentic moonshine stiff. So yeah, it's I
(25:42):
don't know if it truly works or not, but apparently
at one time it did. All right, So let's let's
move on the hillbilly car. And this is one. I
think this is a big one. This is the one
that seems to get all the pressed and maybe that's
just because this is when all the all the the
focus was on Ernie. I guess when the MAO went
out and did their little video shoot and when, which
(26:04):
was really really cool. But this beautiful and that's the
one that's on our block site. Um. Also, you know
when he was showing up to different cruising events and
things like that, this this is the vehicle he's driving.
It was the Mercury Dwarf. And this is probably this
is my favorite car the whole bunch. I think I
thought you might say that, I think it is. It's
modeled well the forty nine Mercury, of course will recognize
(26:26):
that design from Rebel without a Cause. Uh So, Ernie
had really enjoyed this vehicle story goes for decades. He
loved this because especially loved it's grilled, the unique three
piece window. And uh, he thought the forty nine was
much better looking than the fifty or fifty one Mercury
(26:48):
and this one is authentic. I mean has the lake pipes,
it has you know, the great big sun visor that
goes over the top. It's been nosed in decked, which
means it's just taking the trim off of the nose
in the back end. Um, so you know, a few
hot right elements. It's been lowered apparently it looks really low.
I think he's had it up to a hundred miles
per hour before. That's the top speed of this thing. Now,
it took him five years. Been, it took him five
(27:10):
years to build this car, so this is by far
to date as far as I know. Uh, this is
the longest build for Mercury, and I think it shows
in all the details. I mean it's uh it's obviously
running and driving still. Um, he's taken it to cruise events.
He goes around all over the place and gets a
huge crowd gathering when he they have the Rebel Rouse,
(27:31):
which is a cool name. Um, of course you know
from the James Dean movie The The Devil Without a Cause. Um,
I'm sorry, Rebel Without a Cause. And I say, Devil
without a Cause. That's that's a kid rock album, is
it really? Yeah? Sure? Alright, so anyways, a little slip there,
but um so anyways, the Rebel Without a Cause movie.
Um started the build in September of two thousand and four,
(27:52):
went all the way through two thousand nine when he
did finished it. Now it's it's as he says, it's
solid as the original would be. It's a very very
sturdy car. Uh, turquoise paint. Has flamethrowers on it as well,
so he's got a lot of a lot of um
you know what he says. He says flamethrowers somewhere. I
read flamethrowers somewhere. I've also seen that as flames painted
on the hood. I wonder if that's being confused somewhere,
(28:13):
because flamethrower exhaust is something completely different, and I wonder,
I wonder if somebody confused the flames on the hood
with flamethrower exhausted. It's an easy mistake to make, but
I would much much prefer the flamethrower exhaust. Think that's
such a cool thing. So, and that's not his last
car that he's built though, and this is only the
date um just after that, I guess he worked on
(28:35):
a thirty four Ford Sedan, right, yeah, two door, and
a lot of people will associate this with Bonnie and Clyde. Um.
You know they have the famous death car, which I
believe we've talked about in an earlier episode. Yeah, I
think have um, so of course you know they bonding.
Clyde met their end in the nineteen sedan. Uh just
(29:00):
riddled with bullet holes, look like Swiss cheese. And this
one doesn't have the big ve et and it obviously
there's just not enough room for it. It has another
unusual drive train. It has the Toyota four k E
engine with with a five speed transmission. And you may
think that sounds funny, but the way he ports this
thing an exhausted and everything, it's not gonna sound like
a Toyota. And when it when it's finished, it's gonna
(29:22):
sound like a thirty four Poards at end, when he's done,
I mean like the nine Mercury has. Even though it
has a Toyota engine, it's got the lake pipes and
it's probably not muffled in any way. It sounds like
a forty nine mercury when it when it fires up
or it is similar anyways, it doesn't have you know,
what you would think of like, ah, I guess a
compact car sound or anything like. No, No, it sounds
like it's swinging above its weight class. It really does.
(29:44):
It's definitely a good sound. So don't worry about if
you're worried about the Toyota engine and this thing. Other
than you know, um, I guess historical accuracy, which you
just can't do on something that small. Um, really it
shouldn't be of a concern. Yeah, and I want to
go ahead and add that, uh, to date, there was not.
This was by no means meant to be his last vehicle. No, no, no,
(30:06):
this just means that, you know, the last one completed.
Yea last one completed. Last we can go to the
museum and see. And who knows what he's working on
right now in his grabe I mean really something. I
hope he is. I really do. I hope he is still. Um.
But it's it's a bare steel body, which I love. Ben.
By way, it's got light rust on it, which is
intended to give the car kind of a like a
barn fine fields not completely rusted, just real light rust.
(30:28):
And of course being in the Southwest, he's got the
advantage there. He can maintain it exactly how he wants
it exactly. And um, you know, of course the rustic
appearance I mentioned, but suicide doors, it's got a luverard hood,
it's got that long slanted grilled you know, it's all chrome.
Of course, beautiful front end, roll up windows as all
of his cars have. Um hand crank roll that windshield
(30:49):
like the old Ford's head um. Really interesting hood ornament too. Yeah,
yeah it does. It's it's something that he did, he
craft at himself. He I think he found it. It's
the nineteen thirty five Auburn Flying Ladies. Okay, well he
found it. Yeah, that's so that's a found part um man.
And even the way this one came about it, I
guess he saw somebody with a thirty four Ford Sedan
(31:10):
that matched this one at a show and Ernie walked
up to the guy and it was in this condition
like you would see this one, and he said, I
really hope you don't finish this car, meaning that you know,
I hope you don't put any kind of like glossy
paint on it. Make it a hot rod or whatever.
And the guy said it's finished, and he said, well,
it's beautiful the way it is, you know, just leave
it the way it is. It's beautiful. And that's when
(31:31):
he went to work on this thirty four Ford sedan
of his own, and he modeled it right after that
one that he found. That's just so inspiring. I want
to also point out one thing that's important to remember
is that, as I believe we said this earlier, Scott,
but just in case we have it, all of these
cars are street legal. That's right. The Hillbilly is street legal. Uh,
(31:53):
you don't want to take him on the interstate. Well
he has though. He has though, because the forty nine
Mercury now he's driven that from Phoenix all the way
to fair Amount, Indiana. Well, yeah, the Mercury is fine.
The Mercury is fine. Sure. I mean that, I think
the Hillbilly tops. I didn't mean to. I didn't mean
to step on you with that one. I thought, I
thought you're talking about all these cars because he does
(32:14):
take them on the highway, so oh yeah, yeah, and
they're fine on the Highway, especially at Mercury. But the Hillbilly,
no way Yeah, the Hillbilly is just a little bit slow,
but that's because it's supposed to be built on that
older idea understood. Yeah, you're gonna start losing parts like birdhouses. Yeah.
So he's got as a matter of fact, that Ford
and Mercury has something like thirty thousand miles on the
odometer at this point. So you know, he's running and
(32:36):
driving these things every chance he gets. He takes them
to car shows. He you know, he does to cruising events.
He cruises him on Roots fifty six when he can.
He's even you know, made these you know, cross state
tours as I mentioned, you know, from Phoenix to fair
Amount for I think it's something called the James Dean
Run that he attended of course with that car. Um.
And you know you can ask him about, you know,
(32:57):
buying these cars if you're at the museum, you can
say because a lot of people offer large sums of
money for them. Because he's got all them on display
at this museum in Maricopa, you can go see them
anytime you want. You can go to the museum website,
which I think was just Dwarf Car Museum dot com.
I think, um, it's off the top of my head
um dot com. Okay, and there's also Dwarf Car Promotions
(33:17):
dot com and that's got a lot of background information
on Ernie and the photos and everything. Um, but you
can't you can't buy the cars. He will not sell them.
He says he's way too proud of them to ever
get rid of me. Loves them. But you can buy
some Dwarf Car merchandise when you're there, so you can
buy things like shirts and window stickers and DVDs. And
they even have trading cards been like a dark car
cruiser trading cars. So that's kind of cool. Um. And
(33:40):
the funny thing is that if you go this is
such kind of a small town thing. Really, you know,
he's he's I guess in this really little town there,
and so accessible that his emails right online, his phone
numbers right online. You can contact Ernie and talk to
him if you want to. And I'll let you dig
up that information. I'm not gonna give it here, but
you know you can you can find ways to contact
act Ernie and you can go out there and make
(34:01):
a trip and you know, see him and talk to
him and and kind of pole up with him, I
guess for a little while and see what's going on.
Maybe he'll give you a ride in one. Who knows
what I think. This is an amazing person. Yeah, this
is really cool. I can't guarantee a ride in that
or anything like car stuff is not legally guarantee rides
with any living legends, now that's true. But but he
(34:22):
is definitely what I would call a living legend because
he has got you know, before I said he's a
simple man with simple pleasures, right with the whole waffle
house thing, right, this guy is unbelievably skilled. Then when
you see what he does, when you see what he
makes out of really nothing, out of other people's scrap,
this guy is just far head and shoulders above everybody
(34:43):
else as far as I'm concerned with. With fabrication and
just the way he builds things is so amazing, like
he has a vision and he makes it all happen. Yeah,
definitely definitely a master in my book. Uh So, I
guess that's all I have on Ernie Adam other than uh,
go see him if you're in the area, go check
out this museum. Yeah, and I hope this is a
(35:05):
story that continues. I hope that you know past that
thirty four Ford that you know he just put together.
I hope that, you know, we see another five six
cars come out of Ernie. I mean, he's an older guy,
and these take these take like five years to build,
three years to build whatever it is, so you know,
it's kind of limited in the number that he can produce.
But I hope he continues to build, you know, right
up to the point where he can't do it anymore.
(35:25):
And I hope that, uh somebody, I know for a
fact that he's inspired other people to build their own
dwarf cars as well, So that's how you know that
you're really leaving a legacy. Let's see before we head
out here, Scott, do you want to do a little
listener mail? I would love to do that. So Tracy
(35:47):
B writes to us and says, Hello, Scott and Ben,
I heard you say recently that a Hemmy episode was
on the way, and I wanted to make sure the
Ford Boss four to nine wasn't overlooked. I'm guessing Chrysler
is such a lock on the name Hemmy now they'll
probably make me pay for each time I type it. However,
there was a time Ford was in the game to
hate to see Ford Motor Company go unmentioned. As for
(36:09):
the folks that thought Preston Tucker got too much airtime
versus Henry Ford when Ford may have been around first,
but Tucker have more story. I loved it, Tracy ps.
Mid grade gas is still a rip off, says Tracy B.
And you probably agree, you know what. I Oh, man,
I might get skewered for this one. Uh, I agree,
(36:31):
but I use it in the Monte Carlo. Oh no,
ben I because I agree it's a rip off as well. Yeah,
it's it's a superstition at this point, but I just
use it. Okay, all right, Well, extra money at the
pump every time, you know, if you want. Okay, here's
the worst part. If I'm if I'm lower money trying
to cut corners financially, then I do put just regular
(36:54):
in there. So I know that it is. I know, okay,
I get it. I know it's a good car. Your
car is rated for regular gas. It's not rated for premium.
If you're if you're a rated for premium and you're
putting mid grade in, I would understand that you're cutting corners.
But this is just spending extra money. You don't have to.
If it's rated for regular. Put in regular. What costs
can you put on peace of mind? Okay, good point.
(37:17):
I mean that's that's no it. I you know what
I know. The arguments. UM, I will say, we've you've
probably heard this story before. This is just an interesting one.
UM way back in UM when my parents were kids
in Tennessee, UM, one of the one of one of
(37:41):
the only gas stations up on the mountain had those
had those three pumps. You could get your regular, you
get your I think they didn't have mid grade. I
think they had regular, premium, and diesel. Right. So, uh,
the shop closes down and there's a fire, you know,
years after it's closed, and so people like our fighters come,
the buildings destroyed, and so that sort of spurs development
(38:04):
and they break in. They start breaking ground to build
something else there, and they find that the premium and
the regular came from the same tank. No kids, no difference.
That guy was ripping people off for decades. There was
no separate tank for mixing or anything, none of it.
It was just one tank so that you paid extra
for on that side. Now there was diel and that's
(38:27):
regular gas, and he's getting two different types of gas.
Out of that one gas thing. Oh no, it was
the same gas man. He was just ripping people that somehow,
somehow changing the well magic tank. I get it, So
thank you Tracy for that. And I agree Preston had
a lot of story. Henry Ford also had a lot
of story. And we should talk about the Boss four
(38:48):
twenty nine. We should. I think that's a really good
point and want to get that on the air before
our HEMI episode, which will surely be world famous. Yeah,
whenever we get around too, because that's on a long
long list of listener suggestion. So it's there. We're working
on it. We'll get to it, I promised, because the
Hemy story is a good story as well. Yes, And
if you would like to learn more about Ernie and
(39:11):
the dwarf car phenomenon, go ahead and visit car Stuff
Show dot com, where you can check out our blog
on this even to see a few videos that you
and I made back in the day of Scott and
you can listen to all of our podcast And if
you want to suggest an upcoming topic for us, here's
what you do. Just hop on your computer and send
(39:31):
us an email directly. Our address is car Stuff at
Discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics, just a how stuff works dot com. Let
us know what you think. Send an email to podcast
at how stuff works dot com.
Go behind the Wheel, under the Hood and beyond with
car stuff from house Stuff Works dot Com. Everybody, welcome
to the podcast. I'm Scoff and I'm Ben Bully, and
we've got a topic that is really if you want
to get really technical about it. It's part two. Yeah. Yeah.
(00:22):
This is a listener suggestion from one of our Free
Court writers, right yeah, Robert s which we talked about
in the Legends Cars podcast, and I didn't misspeak there
at his Legends Cars and Uh, Robert suggested in that
podcast we talked about dwarf cars, and my assumption is
that today's topic is where he was really going with
(00:43):
this thing. I think he really wanted to hear about
dwarf car cruisers instead of dwarf car racing. And we
we covered dwarf car racing in the first episode months ago.
It seems like it was a long time ago now,
and now we're going to kind of make good on
the on the whole promise to Robert s Uh to
cover dwarf cars by covering dwarf car cruisers, which I
(01:03):
think everybody's gonna find interesting because these things are fascinating. Ben. Yeah,
and I I wonder if we have any listeners who
haven't heard about this before. If you haven't, you are
in for a treat, ladies and gentlemen, especially if you're
a fan of classic cars the same way that Scott
and I are. You know, we're both fans of these
sands of these fans of classic cars and general fans
(01:26):
of everything about dwarf cars racing all that. It all
comes into one story here with the dwarf car cruisers,
and it has a lot to do with the guy
named Ernie Adams that we're gonna talk about, And of
course it has all all to do with Ernie Adams really,
um as did dwarf car racing, and um I guess
we're gonna let's start at the beginning, Ben, how about that.
I mean, we don't need to go into a full
(01:46):
recap of, you know, the whole dwarf car racing history
or anything like that, but Ernie had a place in
dwarf car racing history that we do need to cover
because he's really the originator of the whole thing, right, Yeah,
Ernie and guy named Darren Schmaltz are the founders I
guess would be fair to call them of the dwarf
car racing, although it wasn't really called a dwarf car
(02:11):
um until the eighties the first the first dwarf car
comes along. N right, Yeah, that's right. He had built
one car that was kind of an odd ball car
in that, you know, there were decades between when the
first one is produced and the second one is produced.
So let'll tell you what. Let's just kind of go
through Ernie Adams. Uh. And I know this sounds like history,
(02:31):
but it's gonna go quick. Okay, it's Ernie. I'm gonna
say Ernie Adams life. But but really we're just breaking
it down into a way that I saw it laid
out on his website, which is uh. I think there's
one called Dwarf Car Promotions and then there's one called
Dwarf Car Museum and you can find you know, those
online just a simple keyword search and you can find
all this information there. But I'll kind of lay it
out for you quickly, just kind of cut to the
(02:52):
chase on this one. Really. Um. So, in the early years,
Ernie came from a well, he had a long time
fascination with cars, which started in grade school and he
built his first wooden car, which was really just kind
of a crate box with the steering wheel and you know, um,
I guess he had peanut butter jar lids for tail lights.
You know that kind of pull push type roadster that.
Um he had his mom dragging him around town in
(03:13):
this thing when he was really young in grade school.
And I guess the family ben This is kind of
an interesting little side note. The family lived um near
the junkyard, the town junkyard, and they kind of learned that,
you know what, some of the stuff isn't all that bad.
Let's let's take that and we can we can sell
it in a garage sale or whatever, and we can
reuse some of it, repurpose it. And Ernie learned these
(03:34):
really valuable skills by doing that. And he learned that,
you know, I can make something out of nothing, really
make something out of what other people call trash. I
can make something that people really want or what I
really want. And uh And not only that they sold
things to make uh um. They would they would like
gather things from this junkyard and they would they would
make like um, they would make their own things. They
(03:55):
would sell them. They would reason to raise money to create,
uh well, not to create, but to to get Christmas
money for the year. It was a very purposeful Um,
I don't know, have better to say that. Then maybe
they were they were able to take something or take
nothing and make something out. It was it was sort
of a side business for them for a while. And
(04:15):
I think I'm really glad that you mentioned the stuff
about Christmas because it's important to understand that for Ernie
and his family, when Ernie was growing up, this was
I will say, maybe this was fifty fun in a hobby,
but it was also a necessity for them. Economics. Yeah,
I mean, this is the Depression era, you know, and
(04:37):
there's a lot of hard times, and the family's grown
up or he's grown up in this family and Harvard, Nebraska,
so it's uh, Midwest America, you know, typical story, I
guess you know, the family fell in difficult times. They
make do with what they can, and this is something
that he was able to do. Is is able to
make things out of nothing. Really, it's also very important
to know this will come up later in our story. Uh,
(04:58):
this is where Ernie first cuts his teeth in fabrication
and bending and shaping metal exactly exactly, and this kind
of led him to let's say, well, let's skip ahead
just a little bit, so you know, he's got all
this background, right, and he creates his first dwarf car,
which is a it was built in nineteen sixty five.
And I got some pretty good notes on this one,
(05:18):
and we weren't going to in depth as as on
other cars as we do in this one. But his
first dwarf car, which is kind of an odd ball
car because again it was built in nineteen sixty five.
It was a Chevy two door sedan and the term
really didn't come until nineteen as you mentioned, I think.
But this, uh, this car that they call the Grandpa
Dwarf now because it's been renamed the Grandpa Dwarf because
(05:41):
it's the first, of course. Yeah, and patriarch and he
worked on this for for years, for about three years
if you start counting from when he began gathering the materials, right, yeah, exactly,
it goes back to a nineteen sixty two. He started
pulling stuff. And when we say pulling stuff, you guys
were literally talking about finding whatever scrap he could. Yeah,
(06:04):
and here's just an example of what he used. Now.
He used an eighteen horsepower Wisconsin engine for the for
the motor because you can't you can't obviously put Chevy
motor into this. It's a scale down Classic. Doesn't say
exactly what scale. Now we know that, um, you know
the Dwarf cars, the Legends cars, you know, the ones
that we see racing, those are five eighth scale replicas
of like thirties and forties cars. But I don't know
(06:25):
if this car is specifically five eighths or if it's
just kind of an eyeballed scaled down Classic version. Right.
I do have the specs on the size. It's uh
nine ft long, it's only fifty three inches high and
as a seventy three inch wheelbase, which uh, just just
for a spoiler alert there. That's not exactly a standard thing, No,
(06:46):
you know, definitely not. And you know, I started to
get into kind of a short list of things that
he had. You had mentioned that he gathered up a
lot of so I mentioned the engine. Um, he was
using a homemade hack saw that he had built out
of a chair frame. So cool again, he built his
own tools. In a lot of cases, he used a
hammer and chisel. Um, he has been hit an arc welder,
which was probably something he was just learning to use,
(07:07):
I mean early on, and he used nine refrigerators for
the steel. Now used you know, the doors mainly, I believe,
is what he was he was going after he said,
you know, refrigerator doors are kind of his his staple
of steel in all of his cars all the way
through present day, because it's a it's a super accessible way.
Well especially you know, at that time, it was a
(07:28):
lot easier to find just a steel refrigerator that have
been discarded and he um funny story, this was still
a learning experience for him. He didn't have the know
how to make what are called compound bends, which is
a skill you need to have when you're making your
own cars. So instead, the story goes, he just used
(07:50):
the bends that were already there in the refrigerator pieces,
so he would find I guess he would kind of
like look for the part of the refrigerator that would
fit car and then cut it. Well, that's probably why
it took nine refrigerators to do this, because he needed
certain parts for certain things. And and we'll find out that,
you know later. A lot of people describe the original
(08:10):
Dwarf car, the one that we're talking at, the Dwarf cruiser,
I should say, as in quote somewhat crude and in
the way it appears because later as we get into
some of the more of these cruisers he get he's very,
very refined and it becomes very complex in the way
that he builds these things. So you know, this this
original one again, I'll get off this one pretty soon.
But um, it originally had solid rubber tires because they
(08:32):
just weren't available at that in that size at that time.
But later they did change them to twelve inch pneumatic tires,
so it's a little more comfortable ride. Um. He also
later added a vinyl top and I think a two
cylinder engine, a two cylinder thirteen horsepower engine, so he
swapped that one out for the Wisconsin engine that he
had in their prior UM it had a cloth interior,
bucket seats, the windows operate, you know, so they can
(08:54):
roll them up and down. Um. And it's still runs
and drives today. It's still kept in in running order
in street legal conditions. So you can go to Ernie
Adams Museum and whereas in a Maracopa, Arizona, I believe,
and you can see the Grandpa Dwarf alongside of the
other five Dwarfs that we're going to talk about. Yeah,
now I'll go ahead and tell you they probably won't
let you drive it. Well you can ask. You might
(09:17):
as well ask on that. I mean, he may take
it out and show you what it what it'll do, though,
because all these things run and drive, and it seems
like he often takes them out and and kind of
stretches their legs a little bit, you know, because it's
bad for these things to sit around and not be driven. Um.
So okay, so in his history and I know we
spent a little bit too much time on that one,
but it's strange and that, you know, you have to
go from the early years to the first dwarf car,
(09:38):
then back to dwarf racing, and then back to dwarf
cruises again. So we're on a dwarf dwarf car and boy,
it's tough for me to say. Been dwarf car racing
and um, the first dwarf race cars appeared in late
nineteen seventy nine, early nineteen eighty and the idea came
from watching he was I think he's watching a motorcycle
sidecar racing in Phoenix with a and yeah, he was
(10:00):
watching it with Darren Schmaltz and uh. As they were leaving,
they started critiquing the race itself and uh Ernie specifically said, well,
these three wheeled racers are a little too slow in
the corners. What would happen if we added a fourth wheel?
See Ben, Now here's my here's my my theory about
this whole thing. These two guys are sitting around the
(10:21):
racetrack watching a motorcycle side car race, having a couple
of beers, you know, maybe a corn dog or something
like that what they call him out there, and and
uh on sixty six cozy dog, having a cozy dog
and uh and they're just relaxing, you know, at the
on the grandstands, and they're kind of just big stuff talking,
you know, like I wouldn't make this really cool. Here's
what I would do with this series. This is the
way I would make these different. And then they started
(10:43):
to kind of put this together, like, well, maybe we
could really do this. Yeah, it sounds like a big
sort of a cocktail napkin type conversation. It kind of does,
But it turned out really well, as a lot of
times those do. And uh and the thought was that
the three wheel race cars or racers rather these uh
these uh sidecar motorcycle side cars were too slow in
the corners for them, because remember these are the original
(11:05):
side cars. They're not the ones that we see now.
They're exceedingly fast, um, the real, real low wide ones.
But he said, you know, four wheels would be a
little better for cornering speed something like that, and the
car body would add appeal for the crowd. So what
we're talking about really is small cars. Yeah, and I'm
glad you said it that way. Just another detail. I
(11:25):
think they talked about the making an oval track because
the sidecar races at that time we're not in the oval.
I didn't know that and they and so so this
is just a this is just an insight into how
broadly they were speaking, because they said, you know, I
can see it so clearly, Scott. It's like if you
and I were sitting there watching race and then you said,
(11:48):
we know, a problem is the three wheels, and I said, yeah,
and the race track isn't even oval. What the heck, man,
I think we could do better than this. We need
to change this this way and it would be much better,
So let's do it. Yeah, And they did. Yeah, they had.
They had a challenge to each other. Um eventually, after
they're after talking such mess as they would say in
(12:09):
some parts of Tennessee, uh Schmaltz said, well, you know what, Ernie,
if you build one of these, then I will build
one too. So they did, and in nineteen seventy nine
early nineteen eighty they built a couple of these cars
that were the first two. And then by nineteen eighty three,
which is just three years later, it had kind of
caught on enough that the County Fair was actually sponsoring
(12:30):
a race in Prescott, Arizona, and they had twelve cars
registered for the first race. And I guess it was
a big success because people kind of stuck with it.
They said, you know, this really works, let's hang onto it.
And then here's what happened. Then. Remember this is where
we go back to our other story, and this will
fill in the gap between the dwarf race cars and
the dwarf car cruisers, because this is when the Lows
(12:52):
Motor speedway guys got involved and the Lows Motor speedway
guys and the two involved in there. I've got in
my notes here in just a second off find it. Oh,
Humpy Wheeler and Elliott Forbes Robinson right at the Charlotte
Motor Speedway and they decided that they were gonna start
up this thing that they didn't know it was going
to call it the Legends Car series yet, but they
(13:13):
were going to start up something that was like scaled
down cars that were built for people who didn't have
a whole lot of money but wanted to race. And
so it's kind of an inexpensive way to get into racing.
And we've told that whole story about you know how
they did this. Uh, they bought four cars I think,
and they modified him a little bit and added some
added some fenders I think, and uh, they they wanted
(13:34):
to have a fiber glass version. They tweaked the originals,
just made it work for their own series. Right, So
they this whole thing came about. And then I think
it was around when the original Legends car actually appeared first,
like April I think of ninety two when the first
Legends car was revealed at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Um,
(13:54):
and I think did that change later to Lowis Motor
Speedway or something like that. I think the name did
change and leave it right as I think I got
the that's the order. I think it went from Charlotte
to Lowe's. Um. But then okay, so Ernie in the
early nineties kind of gets out of the whole thing.
He says, you know, I'm done building these race cars
because you know, it's been taking over and someone else
is still building the original Dwarf race cars. But I
(14:15):
think they've moved to Oh, I want to say it's, um,
it's somewhere in Arizona. I want to say Phoenix, Arizona,
so that I think it's I think following Phoenix and Prescott. Okay,
so I think they're still building the original Dwarf race
cars in Phoenix, Arizona. But um, Ernie kind of went
out on his own and he said, you know what,
I'm done with this. I've sold the company or whatever,
(14:35):
and I'm ready to move on. And he was probably,
i mean, even at that time, getting a little bit old,
he's an older guy. Um. He said, well, let's what
my really what my passion would be, What what I
really want to do is I would like to start
building some street legal classic cars, just scale down classics,
you know, the I mean the ones that you typically
think of you know, the thirty four Ford or the
thirty nine Chevy or whatever. And he's got a whole
(14:57):
list of cars here that we'll talk about. But Um,
he started building these dwarf car cruisers that he called
his masterpieces. Ah. Yes, and he's not calling them that sarcastically.
Before we go on, I have to ask you because
we're gonna start talking a lot about what these cars
look like. And Scott, we're going back to Ernie Adam's
(15:19):
decision to uh get out of dwarf car racing and
go just to building his masterpieces. Earlier, Scott, before the break,
we mentioned that he had this list sort of of
dream cars and the first car that he goes to
um after his racing time days, uh is a thirty
(15:40):
nine Chevy Saturday night cruiser. Yeah, he's got a thirty
nine Chevy Sedan. I hadn't heard the term Saturday night cruiser.
That's cool then, But now the funny thing about this
is that now and understandably why he would go to
this one, he also owns a full size thirty nine Chevy.
Oh yeah, and that's why he did this one. He said, Well,
I like that one so much, I'm gonna min nicket
(16:00):
for one of my one of my masterpieces here, which
is what he first calls these. Um. So it's really
his second dwarf car cruiser, but his first masterpiece. And
he'll build many many more after this, so I'm not
many million, were but a few more after this um
hand too, Yeah, exactly, all by hand. And um it
took him two and a half years to complete the
thirty nine Chevy Sitans. He can see these are these
(16:22):
are lengthy projects. I mean it's him working every single
day in his barn. I mean he builds everything. And
when we say everything, I mean he builds the spokes
and the wheels. He builds the wheels themselves of course,
held the steering wheel. Yeah. And he doesn't have a
bunch of space age tools either. There's only fabrication tools.
Are what a torch? And he had a welder, a
(16:43):
wire feed welder, Yeah exactly. And and he builds. I
mean you can watch the build process and a couple
of different videos here and there. Oh speaking to that.
Can I just mention this right now as we go
down this list of four or five vehicles here, UM,
I have posted something that the Car Stuff Show UM
blog site. I can see the website and uh it's
a blog post and there's a couple of videos of
(17:04):
Ernie and of his cars, and I think it was
Vimeo that did a couple of video of videos, and
there's a YouTube video and it just kind of teases, uh,
you know, a potential possible coming, um, like a full
presentation that they're going to do about Ernie Adams. And
I kind of poked around for that. I couldn't find
that version. But what it did find was that there's
a few different CDs on on Ernie's site that shows
(17:27):
how he builds these things. And you can't watch them
for free. You have to you have to pay because
these are you know, CDs will be sent to you. Yeah,
they're full length. They're about twelve dollars each and you
can watch any one of these. Are three of them.
There's one that's called Ernie Builds a Dwarf, which is
I think it's about thirty eight minutes and these are
an HD by the way, so they're brand new. Um.
The next one is called Half Moon Road the Ernie
(17:49):
Adams Story, which is the whole background story that's about
fifty five minutes long. And there's one called Root sixty
six Arizona Fun Run and that's Ernie cruising on Roots
fifty six in one of his cruisers. So um, that
one's about twenty four minutes long. All those are about
twelve bucks. They're on the on the site. I'm not
selling them or anything like that, so don't get the
wrong impression. But that's the only way you're going to
(18:09):
really get to see Ernie build him outside of going
to Maricopa and visiting Ernie and watching him build one, which,
by the way, I don't think looking at I mean
looking at all the stuff I've seen about Ernie and
and hearing everything about him. He's such a nice guy. Yeah,
he seems pretty cool. He might just say, yeah, come on,
he might say step out to the barn and help
me build with this fender or what. Especially if you
(18:30):
meet him at one of the local waffle houses, he
is like did you read about that? Did? He is
famous at waffle houses throughout Arizona as well as his
dwarf car. Cruiser is his favorite restaurant, right, and every
everybody knows him at all the waffle houses in Arizona.
That's such a weird thing to be known for. But
you know, that's uh, that's just what he is. He's
a he's a simple guy. He's got simple pleasures. Right. Oh.
(18:51):
What we can say though about the kind of things
that you will see on the CDs of his fabrication
construction process, uh, is that, at least in the case
of the thirty nine Chevy, he starts with photographs of
the full size that it already has, and he takes
some measurements, uh from these photos, and then he starts
(19:11):
looking for donor cars, which still I still love that
mentality where he says, well, if I don't need to, um,
I don't need to make something out of whole cloth,
because a lot of stuff that people might throw away
nowadays in the modern age is still perfectly usable. Yeah,
he said donor cars, but I think he meant donor items.
(19:32):
Maybe it is probably better, probably because I still you know,
you know what I read, Bend, I read that he
can He's still he's built six of these dwarf cruisers
that we're gonna talk about. He has he has still
used refrigerator doors for every single dashboard and every single
car he's ever built, because he loves the metal that
isn't a refrigerator door. It's just for some reason, he said,
(19:53):
it's the best metal. It bends the way you wanted to,
it stays where you put it. It's the perfect metal
for him. So he says, you know that one. I
know when you when you said donor cars, maybe maybe
an item or two comes from one, but he adapts
it in some way. He builds everything from scratch now
including the molding. Well yeah, when it comes to body.
But you know that thirty nine Chevy has drive train
(20:14):
from a nineteen seventy two Toyota. Yeah, so he's got
some unusual drive trains, and you know, I mean, we'll
talk about that also as we go through, because there's
a few here that will surprise you. I think, um,
like the Yeah, the Toyota drive trains are surprising. All right.
So we we've talked a little bit about the thirty
nine Chevy Sedan. By the way, that one, a lot
of people say, it's in quotes here a handsome car.
A lot of people really like that one. And that
(20:36):
was his first real attempt at a what we call masterpiece,
or what he calls a master Yeah, kind of the
most complete finished version of a dwarf car. You can
imagine really weighs much more than the Grandpa to the
Grandpa Dwarf, that Chevy was nine hundred pounds and this
one is seventeen hundred and seven. I mean, as far
as complexity goes, the thirty nine Chevy Sedan, it looks
(20:59):
like it looks if if somebody wasn't standing next to it,
you wouldn't realize that that's a dwarf car. Absolutely, the
twenty eight Grandpa Dwarf, although it looks correct, it has
more of the look of, let's say one of those
cars you would find like on the on the kid
tracks that see your point or something, you know, the
kind of kids can get in and drive on the rail,
that that type of car has that appearance. And maybe
it's just because of the style of vehicle it is well,
(21:20):
but you can like, you can see some cool stuff
where he has I think it's the thirty nine right.
There aren't there photos of the thirty nine, the full
scale and the Dwarfs together. There are, Yes, these are
great photos, by the way, I mean when him standing
there and that gives you a true scale of what's
going on, because the thirty nine Sedan is pretty big.
The Chevy Sedan rather, but um, when he's standing next
(21:42):
to them, that's when you get a true appreciation for
the scale of these things, how small they are, because
these are these are waste high cars, and they're like
they're there may be tall at the most uh so,
so it's the remarkably small, remarkably well done, remarkably detailed.
And the next one that he built was a forty
two Ford convertible. So he took a convertible project, which
is amazing to you know. I mean, of course, how
(22:04):
hard is it for this guy to build a convertible
system for a car when he's building a full car.
Really Um, Now, he was I guess inspired or prompted
by others to keep building these cruisers. Once he built
the thirty nine Chevy, they said, well, clearly you're really
good at this. You've got amazing skills. Keep going with
us as long as you can. So he decided to
build a forty two for convertible and it's forty six
(22:26):
inches high. It's baby blue. I think it goes by
the name of gem I think is that one. He
calls it huge hit. People love that car. Then he
went on to build a car that I'll tell you
then This is my least favorite of all of them.
I think Hillbildy. Now, just to give an idea, Now,
he takes years, like two and a half three years
to build the other cars. He built this one in
(22:47):
something like three months. Now, I mean, I know he
he must love it. I mean, that's the way. That's
why he did it. But they say that you have
to see it to believe it because it was inspired
by a car that he saw the show in Casta Grande, Arizona. Uh,
And it took three months to build. That required several
antiques to complete the build. So he's taking antiques of
other kinds like milk jugs and um, looks like he's
(23:08):
got old bird houses and stuff like that attached to it.
It's uh, I don't know. It's kind of like the
Beverly Hillbillies type car sort of it. It is similar
and a lot of that. According to and this is
from one of his proper websites. When he was in
Cassa Grande, he met a guy named Zeke who already
had to Hillbilly model. AI's so I think he kind
(23:29):
of he kind of became infatuated with the aesthetic of this.
And I don't think you're off base at all to
call it kind of a Beverly Hillbillies car, because that's
sort of what it's supposed to be. It's still got
a two cylinder own and motor um and or it
did originally, right, they switched it over to a big
(23:50):
four cylinder. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with whopping thirteen horse power. Yeah,
that's right from an American Austin. So they did swap
that one. So he does a lot of motor swapping
and things like that. I think he might refine these
a little bit as we go, Like remember from the
hard rubber tires to the pneumatic tires and stuff like that.
But um, if you have three different horns, I would guess, yeah,
that's that's a good example. Then they're probably all mounted
(24:12):
to the to the to the hood zone. So yeah,
do you like this one? Um? I like it. I
don't think if I had to pick one, yeah, uh,
this would not be the one that I picked. Is
my favorite. It's more of a to me. Um, to
be absolutely candid, especially in comparison to some of the
other ones. This is this is a little bit more
(24:33):
art than it is car. That's kind of the way
I felt as well, because it's just I mean, if
you look at it, and you do have to see
it to believe it, I mean it's uh, it's it's
on the art car type of type of vehicle line,
I guess. And you know, there's just stuff welded to
it all over the place, like I mentioned milk cans
and bird houses and I don't know, horns that you
mentioned as a stove and as a heating stove in
(24:53):
the suitcase for a trunk of course, you know, things
like that. There's just a lot of rust and clutter
on this car. And I know that's the style, this
hillbilly car style. I guess it's kind of like, Um,
you know, there's the rat rod style, there's the there's
the classic rod style, there's the hillbilly style. I guess.
I don't know. I've this car carward. Look. Um, this
car would look just as just as normal in um
(25:19):
in you know, nineteen thirties or forties Appalachia as it
would at burning Man today. Um it has a moonshine
still on it, which I you know, I'm not. I'm
not a police officer or a lawyer myself. I don't
know how that how that interacts with open container laws
and that's an authentic moonshine stiff. So yeah, it's I
(25:42):
don't know if it truly works or not, but apparently
at one time it did. All right, So let's let's
move on the hillbilly car. And this is one. I
think this is a big one. This is the one
that seems to get all the pressed and maybe that's
just because this is when all the all the the
focus was on Ernie. I guess when the MAO went
out and did their little video shoot and when, which
(26:04):
was really really cool. But this beautiful and that's the
one that's on our block site. Um. Also, you know
when he was showing up to different cruising events and
things like that, this this is the vehicle he's driving.
It was the Mercury Dwarf. And this is probably this
is my favorite car the whole bunch. I think I
thought you might say that, I think it is. It's
modeled well the forty nine Mercury, of course will recognize
(26:26):
that design from Rebel without a Cause. Uh So, Ernie
had really enjoyed this vehicle story goes for decades. He
loved this because especially loved it's grilled, the unique three
piece window. And uh, he thought the forty nine was
much better looking than the fifty or fifty one Mercury
(26:48):
and this one is authentic. I mean has the lake pipes,
it has you know, the great big sun visor that
goes over the top. It's been nosed in decked, which
means it's just taking the trim off of the nose
in the back end. Um, so you know, a few
hot right elements. It's been lowered apparently it looks really low.
I think he's had it up to a hundred miles
per hour before. That's the top speed of this thing. Now,
it took him five years. Been, it took him five
(27:10):
years to build this car, so this is by far
to date as far as I know. Uh, this is
the longest build for Mercury, and I think it shows
in all the details. I mean it's uh it's obviously
running and driving still. Um, he's taken it to cruise events.
He goes around all over the place and gets a
huge crowd gathering when he they have the Rebel Rouse,
(27:31):
which is a cool name. Um, of course you know
from the James Dean movie The The Devil Without a Cause. Um,
I'm sorry, Rebel Without a Cause. And I say, Devil
without a Cause. That's that's a kid rock album, is
it really? Yeah? Sure? Alright, so anyways, a little slip there,
but um so anyways, the Rebel Without a Cause movie.
Um started the build in September of two thousand and four,
(27:52):
went all the way through two thousand nine when he
did finished it. Now it's it's as he says, it's
solid as the original would be. It's a very very
sturdy car. Uh, turquoise paint. Has flamethrowers on it as well,
so he's got a lot of a lot of um
you know what he says. He says flamethrowers somewhere. I
read flamethrowers somewhere. I've also seen that as flames painted
on the hood. I wonder if that's being confused somewhere,
(28:13):
because flamethrower exhaust is something completely different, and I wonder,
I wonder if somebody confused the flames on the hood
with flamethrower exhausted. It's an easy mistake to make, but
I would much much prefer the flamethrower exhaust. Think that's
such a cool thing. So, and that's not his last
car that he's built though, and this is only the
date um just after that, I guess he worked on
(28:35):
a thirty four Ford Sedan, right, yeah, two door, and
a lot of people will associate this with Bonnie and Clyde. Um.
You know they have the famous death car, which I
believe we've talked about in an earlier episode. Yeah, I
think have um, so of course you know they bonding.
Clyde met their end in the nineteen sedan. Uh just
(29:00):
riddled with bullet holes, look like Swiss cheese. And this
one doesn't have the big ve et and it obviously
there's just not enough room for it. It has another
unusual drive train. It has the Toyota four k E
engine with with a five speed transmission. And you may
think that sounds funny, but the way he ports this
thing an exhausted and everything, it's not gonna sound like
a Toyota. And when it when it's finished, it's gonna
(29:22):
sound like a thirty four Poards at end, when he's done,
I mean like the nine Mercury has. Even though it
has a Toyota engine, it's got the lake pipes and
it's probably not muffled in any way. It sounds like
a forty nine mercury when it when it fires up
or it is similar anyways, it doesn't have you know,
what you would think of like, ah, I guess a
compact car sound or anything like. No, No, it sounds
like it's swinging above its weight class. It really does.
(29:44):
It's definitely a good sound. So don't worry about if
you're worried about the Toyota engine and this thing. Other
than you know, um, I guess historical accuracy, which you
just can't do on something that small. Um, really it
shouldn't be of a concern. Yeah, and I want to
go ahead and add that, uh, to date, there was not.
This was by no means meant to be his last vehicle. No, no, no,
(30:06):
this just means that, you know, the last one completed.
Yea last one completed. Last we can go to the
museum and see. And who knows what he's working on
right now in his grabe I mean really something. I
hope he is. I really do. I hope he is still. Um.
But it's it's a bare steel body, which I love. Ben.
By way, it's got light rust on it, which is
intended to give the car kind of a like a
barn fine fields not completely rusted, just real light rust.
(30:28):
And of course being in the Southwest, he's got the
advantage there. He can maintain it exactly how he wants
it exactly. And um, you know, of course the rustic
appearance I mentioned, but suicide doors, it's got a luverard hood,
it's got that long slanted grilled you know, it's all chrome.
Of course, beautiful front end, roll up windows as all
of his cars have. Um hand crank roll that windshield
(30:49):
like the old Ford's head um. Really interesting hood ornament too. Yeah,
yeah it does. It's it's something that he did, he
craft at himself. He I think he found it. It's
the nineteen thirty five Auburn Flying Ladies. Okay, well he
found it. Yeah, that's so that's a found part um man.
And even the way this one came about it, I
guess he saw somebody with a thirty four Ford Sedan
(31:10):
that matched this one at a show and Ernie walked
up to the guy and it was in this condition
like you would see this one, and he said, I
really hope you don't finish this car, meaning that you know,
I hope you don't put any kind of like glossy
paint on it. Make it a hot rod or whatever.
And the guy said it's finished, and he said, well,
it's beautiful the way it is, you know, just leave
it the way it is. It's beautiful. And that's when
(31:31):
he went to work on this thirty four Ford sedan
of his own, and he modeled it right after that
one that he found. That's just so inspiring. I want
to also point out one thing that's important to remember
is that, as I believe we said this earlier, Scott,
but just in case we have it, all of these
cars are street legal. That's right. The Hillbilly is street legal. Uh,
(31:53):
you don't want to take him on the interstate. Well
he has though. He has though, because the forty nine
Mercury now he's driven that from Phoenix all the way
to fair Amount, Indiana. Well, yeah, the Mercury is fine.
The Mercury is fine. Sure. I mean that, I think
the Hillbilly tops. I didn't mean to. I didn't mean
to step on you with that one. I thought, I
thought you're talking about all these cars because he does
(32:14):
take them on the highway, so oh yeah, yeah, and
they're fine on the Highway, especially at Mercury. But the Hillbilly,
no way Yeah, the Hillbilly is just a little bit slow,
but that's because it's supposed to be built on that
older idea understood. Yeah, you're gonna start losing parts like birdhouses. Yeah.
So he's got as a matter of fact, that Ford
and Mercury has something like thirty thousand miles on the
odometer at this point. So you know, he's running and
(32:36):
driving these things every chance he gets. He takes them
to car shows. He you know, he does to cruising events.
He cruises him on Roots fifty six when he can.
He's even you know, made these you know, cross state
tours as I mentioned, you know, from Phoenix to fair
Amount for I think it's something called the James Dean
Run that he attended of course with that car. Um.
And you know you can ask him about, you know,
(32:57):
buying these cars if you're at the museum, you can
say because a lot of people offer large sums of
money for them. Because he's got all them on display
at this museum in Maricopa, you can go see them
anytime you want. You can go to the museum website,
which I think was just Dwarf Car Museum dot com.
I think, um, it's off the top of my head
um dot com. Okay, and there's also Dwarf Car Promotions
(33:17):
dot com and that's got a lot of background information
on Ernie and the photos and everything. Um, but you
can't you can't buy the cars. He will not sell them.
He says he's way too proud of them to ever
get rid of me. Loves them. But you can buy
some Dwarf Car merchandise when you're there, so you can
buy things like shirts and window stickers and DVDs. And
they even have trading cards been like a dark car
cruiser trading cars. So that's kind of cool. Um. And
(33:40):
the funny thing is that if you go this is
such kind of a small town thing. Really, you know,
he's he's I guess in this really little town there,
and so accessible that his emails right online, his phone
numbers right online. You can contact Ernie and talk to
him if you want to. And I'll let you dig
up that information. I'm not gonna give it here, but
you know you can you can find ways to contact
act Ernie and you can go out there and make
(34:01):
a trip and you know, see him and talk to
him and and kind of pole up with him, I
guess for a little while and see what's going on.
Maybe he'll give you a ride in one. Who knows
what I think. This is an amazing person. Yeah, this
is really cool. I can't guarantee a ride in that
or anything like car stuff is not legally guarantee rides
with any living legends, now that's true. But but he
(34:22):
is definitely what I would call a living legend because
he has got you know, before I said he's a
simple man with simple pleasures, right with the whole waffle
house thing, right, this guy is unbelievably skilled. Then when
you see what he does, when you see what he
makes out of really nothing, out of other people's scrap,
this guy is just far head and shoulders above everybody
(34:43):
else as far as I'm concerned with. With fabrication and
just the way he builds things is so amazing, like
he has a vision and he makes it all happen. Yeah,
definitely definitely a master in my book. Uh So, I
guess that's all I have on Ernie Adam other than uh,
go see him if you're in the area, go check
out this museum. Yeah, and I hope this is a
(35:05):
story that continues. I hope that you know past that
thirty four Ford that you know he just put together.
I hope that, you know, we see another five six
cars come out of Ernie. I mean, he's an older guy,
and these take these take like five years to build,
three years to build whatever it is, so you know,
it's kind of limited in the number that he can produce.
But I hope he continues to build, you know, right
up to the point where he can't do it anymore.
(35:25):
And I hope that, uh somebody, I know for a
fact that he's inspired other people to build their own
dwarf cars as well, So that's how you know that
you're really leaving a legacy. Let's see before we head
out here, Scott, do you want to do a little
listener mail? I would love to do that. So Tracy
(35:47):
B writes to us and says, Hello, Scott and Ben,
I heard you say recently that a Hemmy episode was
on the way, and I wanted to make sure the
Ford Boss four to nine wasn't overlooked. I'm guessing Chrysler
is such a lock on the name Hemmy now they'll
probably make me pay for each time I type it. However,
there was a time Ford was in the game to
hate to see Ford Motor Company go unmentioned. As for
(36:09):
the folks that thought Preston Tucker got too much airtime
versus Henry Ford when Ford may have been around first,
but Tucker have more story. I loved it, Tracy ps.
Mid grade gas is still a rip off, says Tracy B.
And you probably agree, you know what. I Oh, man,
I might get skewered for this one. Uh, I agree,
(36:31):
but I use it in the Monte Carlo. Oh no,
ben I because I agree it's a rip off as well. Yeah,
it's it's a superstition at this point, but I just
use it. Okay, all right, Well, extra money at the
pump every time, you know, if you want. Okay, here's
the worst part. If I'm if I'm lower money trying
to cut corners financially, then I do put just regular
(36:54):
in there. So I know that it is. I know, okay,
I get it. I know it's a good car. Your
car is rated for regular gas. It's not rated for premium.
If you're if you're a rated for premium and you're
putting mid grade in, I would understand that you're cutting corners.
But this is just spending extra money. You don't have to.
If it's rated for regular. Put in regular. What costs
can you put on peace of mind? Okay, good point.
(37:17):
I mean that's that's no it. I you know what
I know. The arguments. UM, I will say, we've you've
probably heard this story before. This is just an interesting one.
UM way back in UM when my parents were kids
in Tennessee, UM, one of the one of one of
(37:41):
the only gas stations up on the mountain had those
had those three pumps. You could get your regular, you
get your I think they didn't have mid grade. I
think they had regular, premium, and diesel. Right. So, uh,
the shop closes down and there's a fire, you know,
years after it's closed, and so people like our fighters come,
the buildings destroyed, and so that sort of spurs development
(38:04):
and they break in. They start breaking ground to build
something else there, and they find that the premium and
the regular came from the same tank. No kids, no difference.
That guy was ripping people off for decades. There was
no separate tank for mixing or anything, none of it.
It was just one tank so that you paid extra
for on that side. Now there was diel and that's
(38:27):
regular gas, and he's getting two different types of gas.
Out of that one gas thing. Oh no, it was
the same gas man. He was just ripping people that somehow,
somehow changing the well magic tank. I get it, So
thank you Tracy for that. And I agree Preston had
a lot of story. Henry Ford also had a lot
of story. And we should talk about the Boss four
(38:48):
twenty nine. We should. I think that's a really good
point and want to get that on the air before
our HEMI episode, which will surely be world famous. Yeah,
whenever we get around too, because that's on a long
long list of listener suggestion. So it's there. We're working
on it. We'll get to it, I promised, because the
Hemy story is a good story as well. Yes, And
if you would like to learn more about Ernie and
(39:11):
the dwarf car phenomenon, go ahead and visit car Stuff
Show dot com, where you can check out our blog
on this even to see a few videos that you
and I made back in the day of Scott and
you can listen to all of our podcast And if
you want to suggest an upcoming topic for us, here's
what you do. Just hop on your computer and send
(39:31):
us an email directly. Our address is car Stuff at
Discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics, just a how stuff works dot com. Let
us know what you think. Send an email to podcast
at how stuff works dot com.
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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