It’s amazing what can be done with an insane idea, some crowd funding, and the gumption to see the dream through.
Australian entrepreneur Steve Sammartino and Romanian tech genius Raul Oaida had such a dream – to build a drivable car made primarily of Lego parts that would run solely on air.
Their dream started to turn to reality after Sammartino issued this tweet in February, 2012:
The Twitter crowdfunding campaign was successful, with about 40 people contributing to the project, dubbed appropriately the Super Awesome Micro Project.
Almost two years and 500,000 Lego pieces later, they have accomplished their goal.
The Hot Rod-inspired plastic beast is motivated by four air-powered orbital engines with a total of 256 pistons. The intricate engineering that went into creating this almost entirely out of Lego blocks is mind-boggling (the wheels and some load-bearing parts of the car are not made of Lego).
Understandably, the car is not very fast at the moment, with a top speed of around 20 to 30 km/h. But speed is really beside the point, here. This is a car made of plastic toy pieces. That you can drive. And it’s powered by air.
Watch the delicate test drive below: