Dwarf Cars: Mechanic Hand-Builds Mini Motors
Drivers need to be careful to avoid a concussion when getting in and out of these pint-sized cars. The Dwarf Car Museum, in Maricopa, Arizona, showcases the life's work of mechanic Ernie Adams. The 74-year-old, from Walthill, Nebraska, built his first road-legal dwarf car in 1965 - out of nine old refrigerators. Each metal car is hand-built from scratch and takes between 3,000 and 4,000 hours to complete. Ernie has been offered as much as $450,000 for one.
Transcript
00:000000 In Maricopa, Arizona, you can find a large
00:13collection of small cars.
00:160000 This is the Dwarf Car Museum and it's all
00:23the work of Ernie Adams.
00:260000 I built the first metal dwarf car in 1965
00:34out of nine old refrigerators.
00:360000 Ernie hand-builds these small vehicles and
00:39honed his skills making hundreds of dwarf racing cars.
00:43From there, he progressed to the more time-consuming business of constructing scaled-down replicas
00:48of classics.
00:490000 It was in 1992 I built a street-legal 39
00:54Chevy Dwarf car that was a complete car.
00:58It had everything the real car had in it.
01:00On average, it takes anywhere from two and a half years to five years to build a car.
01:08That would be somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 hours.
01:13This was my first car ever built as a steel model car, something you could ride in and
01:19drive.
01:200000 It's got full instrumentation.
01:23The seats in it fold up like an old Model A so you can walk into the back seat.
01:28Amazingly, Ernie's scaled-down cars are fully road-legal.
01:33My cars are not hard to get street-legal because they're not built from other cars.
01:38They're all built from scratch, so there's no other car body numbers or anything involved
01:43in mine.
01:44People ask me how they ride.
01:46I always tell them they ride like a Corvette.
01:49On a good road, they ride real smooth.
01:51On a rough road, they're a little choppy.
01:53But they all get out and travel highway speeds, 75, 80 miles an hour all day long.
01:59Ernie is understandably proud of the fact that he builds the cars himself, even if people
02:04don't always believe him.
02:06The first car I drove down the road and somebody stopped me to ask me about my car.
02:11He said, wow, where did you get that car?
02:13I said, I didn't find it.
02:14I made it.
02:15He said, you made it?
02:17He said, wow, you must have a pretty elaborate shop to build something like that.
02:21I said, I live in a trailer park and I build it out behind the house.
02:24He was instantly very upset.
02:28Pretty soon he turned around and walked off and he turned his head and he said, sir, I've
02:33been a body and fender man all my life.
02:35You don't tell me you just go out in the backyard and build something like that.
02:38Away he went.
02:40I was a little embarrassed because I just got chewed out, you know.
02:44I guess I should have lied to him.
02:47Despite several generous offers, Ernie insists his creations are not for sale.
02:52I even had a man in California offer to trade me his house.
02:55I have been offered anywhere from $50,000 to $450,000 for one.
03:03But they're not for sale and when you get up that high, you're just blowing smoke.
03:08Setting up a museum to let the public see the collection was the idea of Ernie's sons.
03:14When people would come in the shop, they would naturally say this is like coming into a museum.
03:20So I told them, let's just make it a museum.
03:23I really love to see the people's reactions when they come in.
03:27My favorite is one lady come in and she's speechless.
03:31All she could say was wow and oh my God.
03:33When I see reactions like that from people, it makes it all worth it what we do here.
03:39When we're driving down the road with them, people will come up and they'll hang beside
03:43you or behind you.
03:45They're looking at the car or taking pictures of it, a lot of thumbs up, all kinds of gestures.
03:51With the building seemingly at capacity, does Ernie plan on adding any more cars to his museum?
03:56I'm done building cars right now, but I have to finish the last one I'm building.
04:00Everybody says I'll build another one afterwards and I know as soon as the last one's done,
04:06I'll get antsy and have to start something.