When Ernie Adams was a young boy growing up in Arizona, U.S.A., he was fascinated by cars. He spent many hours of his spare time drawing them, and on every school assignment, he would try to include something about cars.
It was not long before Ernie began to think about making his own car. Fortunately for him, he lived quite close to the city dump. He would regularly visit it to see if he could find something that he could use. One day, he found a large empty box. It would make a perfect body for his first car. He began building and was able to include a steering wheel. To make it look even more realistic, he used the lids from peanut butter jars to make the car look as if it had lights. Once finished, he began racing it around his neighbourhood with his friends.
The one thing missing from Ernie’s first car was an engine. Once again, he went searching the dump. He found one and learnt how to repair it before fitting it to his bicycle. It became his first homemade motorbike. Everyone around Ernie did not doubt that he would find his future working with cars and engines.
In 1962, Ernie decided that he would like to make copies of real cars, but in a smaller size. He started to collect old fridges from the dump. By 1965, he had nine of them. He began by sticking two together to make the main body of his car. With the remaining fridges, he made body parts. He used the metal from the fridges to make the tools he required. It took a long time to finish. It was a replica of a 1928 Chevrolet. He called it a ‘dwarf car’.
Ernie built everything inside it. What’s more, the car worked and was licensed to be driven on public roads. People would stop and stare as he drove by. They had never seen anything quite like it. One day, he was stopped by the traffic police. The policemen were so curious about this small car driving along the main road that they just wanted to take a closer look.
Since then, Ernie has been building and building. Each of his dwarf cars takes about 3,000 hours to make – that’s about five years! He uses photographs of old cars to ensure that he can make them as accurate as possible. Since those early years, Ernie has made many dwarf cars. They are now on display in his museum, and he displays them at shows all over the U.S.A.
Quite often, people want to buy one, but Ernie always turns them down. One person even offered US$450,000 for one dwarf car called the Rebel Rouser – but even this offer was turned down. Ernie prefers to be able to look at the cars he has built and drive them. However, he is happy to teach other people how to make their own dwarf cars, and for car enthusiasts to look at what he has built.
Photos: Courtesy of Ernie Adams
See the brilliant Ernie Adams in action:
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