Have you ever wished your shopping cart had a huge engine powering the wheels as you schlepped groceries down the dairy aisle? There would be no point to it, of course, but it would be cool.
That's exactly how the Shopper Chopper came into being. A custom-built giant shopping cart, it was originally created to represent Musser's Market in a Quarryville, Pa. parade. Then the builders got carried away and kept adding stuff until they had a legitimate hot rod shopping cart two years later.
But you won't be able to use this one at the neighborhood Stop-and-Shop. It's 9-feet-tall, 12-feet-long, weighs nearly 3,000 pounds, and has a 290 hp Chevrolet 350 turning drag slicks through a GM TH350 transmission and a Dodge 12-bolt rear axle.
Over 500 LEDs light the thing up like a Christmas tree at night, and it even seats six people.
As cool as it is (c'mon, there's nothing radder than throwing a small block Chevy motor into something that doesn't need it), we can't imagine what you'd do with a giant hot rod shopping cart. Fortunately, the guys who put the Shopper Chopper together figured they could rent it out for parades and events, if for no other reason than to up any organization's WTF factor by at least 10. Because let's be honest, nothing screams WTF like a gas guzzling, brobdingnagian shopping cart.
Then again, it could just be a really well thought out metaphor for America's over-the-top consumerism. Costco shopping carts are already almost this big. But we'll let you be the judge of that.
Photo credit: Shopper Chopper