It's the work of YouTube creator Truong Van Dao, who runs a wildly successful channel entirely devoted to showcasing his handiwork making wooden vehicles. His progression over the last three years has been remarkable; he started out simply carving shoebox-sized replicas of classic luxury cars and supercars, then quickly found worldwide attention when he put together a small wooden Ferrari replica his son could sit in and get pushed about.
The Ferrari looked pretty amazing, but he soon topped it with an exquisitely detailed carving of a Bugatti Centodieci, again at a roughly one-third to one-half-size scale his son could sit in. And this time, it had working steering, and a small electric drivetrain to pootle around with. I mean, just look:
From there, the audience was well established, and the projects increased in size and complexity. Tanks. Trains. Scooters, and of course all manner of gorgeous mini-supercars. He didn't stop at what was getting to showrooms, either, making beautiful, working recreations of some wild concept cars, including the Lamborghini Vision GT, Audi Skysphere and Mercedes Vision AVTR:
But the project that really caught our eye leaves the high-falutin' realm of the concept car for the even higher-falutin' realm of pure mechanical fantasy art. Truong sat down and played with generative AI to come up with an inspiration for the design, then put together a simple metal frame, steering and suspension system, and a small electric drivetrain, before getting down to the woodwork.
He furnished the vehicle with chunky wooden front wheels, with elaborate clockwork-esque hubs, echoed at the back with enormous snail-shell hoops reminiscent of reverse ram horns. He also gave it a curved and slatted wooden roof and some headlights and internal neons.
Then he started to get weird, adding a delightfully complex series of cog-driven lever mechanisms at the front, which can be switched on to achieve a wobbling undulation that Dr. Zoidberg would probably find highly arousing. It's a little like the wind-powered Strandbeest sculptures that walk their way down Dutch beaches, except electrically powered and bearing no actual relation to the movement of the vehicle, which is driven separately.
Needlessly complicated? Sure. Impractical? Absolutely. The locals giggle as he trundles it slowly down the street, peeking through a tiny slot over the gently working alien mandibles for forward vision.
But it has a strange beauty about it, and it's by far the weirdest vehicle we've seen this week. Truong's kids certainly seem to dig rolling around in it. Enjoy a rather relaxing build video below – and if you have any idea what the start bit is supposed to be about with all the pushing, let me know in the comments!
Source: ND Woodworking Art
