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.
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MotorTranscript
00:00 00:35 COMM: In Maricopa, Arizona you can find a
00:13 large collection of small cars.
00:17 00:46 COMM: This is the Dwarf Car Museum and it's
00:23 all the work of Ernie Adams.
00:26 01:00 ERNIE ADAMS I built the first metal dwarf car in
00:31 1965 out of nine old refrigerators.
00:35 01:07 COMM: Ernie hand builds these small vehicles
00:39 and honed his skills making hundreds of dwarf racing cars.
00:43 From there he progressed to the more time consuming business of constructing scaled
00:47 down replicas of classics.
00:48 01:21 ADAMS It was in 1992 I built a street legal
00:53 39 Chevy dwarf car that was a complete car.
00:57 It had everything the real car had in it.
01:00 On average it takes anywhere from two and a half years to five years to build a car.
01:08 That would be somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 hours.
01:12 This was my first car ever built as a steel model car.
01:17 Something you could ride in and drive.
01:19 It's got full instrumentation, the seats in it fold up like an old model A so you can
01:26 walk into the back seat.
01:27 01:42 COMM: Amazingly Ernie's scaled down cars are
01:30 fully road legal.
01:32 01:46 ADAMS My cars are not hard to get street legal
01:35 because they're not built from other cars.
01:38 They're all built from scratch so there's no other car body numbers or anything involved
01:43 in mine.
01:44 People ask me how they ride, I always tell them they ride like a Corvette.
01:48 On a good road they ride real smooth, on a rough road they're a little choppy.
01:53 But they all get out and travel highway speeds, 75, 80 miles an hour all day long.
01:58 02:12 COMM: Ernie is understandably proud of the
02:01 fact that he builds the cars himself, even if people don't always believe him.
02:05 02:19 ADAMS The first car I drove down the road and
02:08 somebody stopped me to ask me about my car.
02:11 He said, "Wow, where did you get that car?"
02:13 I said, "I didn't find it, I made it."
02:15 He said, "You made it?"
02:17 He said, "Wow, you must have a pretty elaborate shop to build something like that."
02:20 I said, "I live in a trailer park and I build it out behind the house."
02:24 He was instantly very upset.
02:28 Pretty soon he turned around and walked off and he turned his head and he said, "Sir,
02:33 I've been a body and fender man all my life and you don't tell me you just go out in the
02:36 backyard and build something like that."
02:38 And away he went.
02:40 I was a little embarrassed because I just got chewed out, you know.
02:44 But I guess I should have lied to him.
02:47 COMM: Despite several generous offers, Ernie
02:49 insists his creations are not for sale.
02:52 02:57 ADAMS He even had a man in California offer
02:54 to trade me his house.
02:55 I have been offered anywhere from $50,000 to $450,000 for one.
03:02 But they're not for sale and when you get up that high you're just blowing smoke, so.
03:07 COMM: Setting up a museum to let the public
03:09 see the collection was the idea of Ernie's sons.
03:12 02:59 ADAMS When people would come in the shop, they
03:15 would naturally say this is like coming into a museum.
03:19 So I told them, "Let's just make it a museum."
03:23 I really love to see the people's reactions when they come in.
03:27 My favourite is one lady come in and she's speechless.
03:31 All she could say was, "Wow!" and "Oh my God!"
03:33 When I see reactions like that from people, it makes it all worth of what we do here.
03:37 03:22 ERNIE When we're driving down the road with them,
03:40 people will come up and they'll hang beside you or behind you.
03:45 They're looking at the car or taking pictures of it.
03:48 A lot of thumbs up, all kinds of gestures.
03:50 03:34 COMM: With the building seemingly at capacity,
03:53 does Ernie plan on adding any more cars to his museum?
03:55 03:38 ADAMS I'm done building cars right now, but
03:58 I have to finish the last one I'm building.
04:00 Everybody says I'll build another one afterwards.
04:02 And I know as soon as the last one's done, I'll get antsy and have to start something,
04:08 so.
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