Pennsylvania man builds street-legal bumper car

A Pennsylvania man is being applauded after he combined a motorcycle and a Chevy to create his own street legal theme-park inspired bumper car.

Dan Hryhorcoff, 72, decided that he wanted to undertake a new project while being stuck at home during the pandemic.  

'I had a machine shop for 35 years and built stuff for other people. When I retired, I didn't want to build for other people anymore, so I played with my own toys,' he told ABC. 

To find inspiration, Hryhorcoff decided to take a stroll in the bumper car game section at Knoebels - an amusement park in Elysburg, Pennsylvania. 

Dan Hryhorcoff, 72, is being applauded after he combined a motorcycle and a Chevy to create his own street legal theme-park inspired bumper car

During his visit, the machine shop owner took a liking to a 1953-syled car made by a company named Lusse and decided to model his own vehicle to it. 

'I decided to copy one of those. I measured, and took photos and made templates, and whatever I needed to copy the car as well as I can,' Hryhorcoff told Popular Science. 

The street-legal bumper car, which measures 13 feet long, 7 feet wide and 5.5 feet tall, is fitted with a Chevrolet Aveo power unit and is made out of fiberglass. 

'I took the front of the Aveo, and chopped it off, and put that in the back of the bumper car. And the front of the bumper car is a motorcycle wheel, ' he noted. 

Hryhorcoff, who once built a 1950s pedal car for children, also added in a pole in the back of the car to mimic the way actual bumper cars get their electricity. 

The street-legal bumper car, which measures 13 feet long, 7 feet wide and 5.5 feet tall, is fitted with a Chevrolet Aveo power unit and is made out of fiberglass

Hryhorcoff, who once built a 1950s pedal car for children, also added in a pole in the back of the car to mimic the way actual bumper cars get their electricity

Talking about how he he learned to build vehicles, Hryhorcoff recalled: 'I learned to run a lathe when I was 13 years old, with my dad, and he was kind of a jack-of-all-trades.' 

A lathe is a tool used to form metal into a round shape.

Hryhorcoff had spent four years after high school in the Navy in the early 1970s, where he had the opportunity to work stateside and repaired radios for F-4 jets. 

He then went on to study mechanical engineering at Penn State University. 

After graduating, the mechanic began to work for a drilling company and soon started his own machine shop called Justus Machine.