There’s a very rare car for sale right now, a remarkable limited-production (only 154 built!) machine designed by low-volume pioneers Local Motors and built by Roush Performance. It’s a purpose-built machine, one designed to accomplish one task, a task that requires speed, maneuverability, efficiency, and thermal efficiency. That task? Bringing you a pizza.
Yes, pizza delivery! There’s severe time constraints for each delivery – every run is like a micro-rally – and the driver must somehow keep that pizza hot and not overly jostled, which can cause the dreaded Topping Slippage, not to mention what it can do to two-liter bottles of fizzy soda. The truth is that most of the cars used for the task today are woefully unqualified for the task, which is why back in 2015 pizza delivery giant Domino’s showed the world their purpose-built pizza delivery car.
The original plan for the purpose-built pizza delivery car was to start from scratch, so they commissioned Local Motors to come up with an ideal design for a pizza delivery car, under the lead of designer Nicolas de Peyer.
A global competition was held for entries, and Slovenian designer Anej Kostrevic’s entry was selected as the ideal pizza delivery candidate: small, agile, able to hold lots of pizzas and keep them warm.
Unfortunately, Domino’s didn’t seem to understand that developing a car from scratch is what economists call “not cheap,” so they changed their minds and asked Local Motors to find a way to pull this off with an existing platform.
Local looked at small city cars like the Scion iQ, Ford Fiesta, Fiat 500, Nissan Cube, Chevy Sonic, Honda Fit, and the Chevy Spark (which was really a re-badged Daewoo Matiz).
Here’s a good video of the project:
The end result was a highly modified Spark, one that seats one but holds 45 pizzas and a dozen two-liter soda bottles, and had a special pizza warming oven that could hold 10 pizzas at a time out of the 45. I guess the pizzas were swapped into the oven 10 at a time?
There’s one of these for sale now on Facebook Marketplace, and it’s not exactly cheap: $14,500! The car looks to be in pretty good shape, and the seller claims it “runs great” and just the “brakes need attention,” like all of us.
What I want to know is what would one do with such a car, should – sorry when – one decides to buy it. I mean, you have a one-seater small car with a lot of cargo room and a special volume designed to keep things warm! So what could you do with it? Assuming you don’t want to deliver pizzas, I mean.
I have some ideas!
- Mobile Quick Sculpture: You know how they have caricaturists at theme parks or fairs or papal conclaves or carnivals? Well this would be like that, but in three dimensions, since it’s sculpture! The pizza oven would be for holding and warming clay, so it’s ready to sculpt!
- Mobile Chick Incubator: Who doesn’t love baby chicks! Monsters, that’s who. It would be so easy to adapt that pizza warmer into a baby chick incubator, and you could bring the joy of baby chicks to people wherever they are! And when the chicks grow up, they become chickens, which, I’m told, are able to produce chicken caviar, also known as “eggs!” You can then sell hot eggs from the warmer while your chickens comfortably roost in the cargo area!
- Mobile Warm Oil Massages: Think about this: one phone call can have a masseuse at your door in 15 minutes, hands slathered in warm oils, heated in their car’s built-in oil warmer!
- Fast Fondue To Your Door: Okay, imagine this – you’re on a date you didn’t really plan well, but you desperately want it to be special. So what do you do? I’ll tell you what you do: you make one quick call or a visit to a website and give your location and then boom, in 15 minutes or less you’re feeding each other the cheesiest, drippiest fondue, right out of the car’s special fondue warming compartment. It’s dairy-based romance, done quick!
- Emergency wax figure repair: If you’re one of the many thousands of Americans who own and operate a wax museum (that’s just an estimate, don’t look into it), you’ll have times when some rowdy teens will chew off Henry Kissinger’s pinkies or one of Taylor Dayne’s ears or maybe a nipple or two from Lada Gaga. What do you do then? You call the quickest mobile wax figure repair is what you do, who shows up with plenty of hot wax ready to make any repair or replace any standard body part.
These should give you a good start, right? With these sure-fire business ideas, I’m sure you’ll find $14,500 a small price to pay for your future life of wild success.
It’d be a shame to let these remarkable vehicles just rot away, after all.
Chocolate fountain delivery?
Hot towel delivery for barber shops and spas.
A fire department should buy it as a mobile warm blanket station. You have a couple dozen people shivering their asses off in the cold because the dumbass in apartment 4C tried to daisy chain every appliance he owned into the same outlet? They need warm blankets as much as they need to have that fire put out. You could paint the Spark fire truck red and even give it its own little siren to complete the look.
I am all in on the Fondue delivery!
I’ve heard that if you are looking for romance, date a pizza delivery driver because;
1. They have a job
2. They have a car
3. They have pizza
Convert oven to refrigerator. Beer delivery service.
Professional: 100% a catering company
Personal: Dogs go on the flat cargo area, and the warmer holds all the supplies for an excellent summer picnic.
My first thought was the chick incubator. Then I saw it was number 2 on the list. I don’t know whether to be proud or afraid.
Torch is inside your mind, man! Or what if you’re inside his mind? What if we’re all just sharing one big mind, man?
I figured they had to had made a few thousand of them. It’s an interesting idea I guess you could keep your takeout food warm or deliver food warm maybe some kind of weird reptile thing.
Who is delivering more than a handful of pies at time?
Kramer’s mobile clothes warmer service.
Always thought the Spark was a bit goofy looking, but cute. Don’t think I ever drove one myself (or the slightly bigger Sonic) but some reviews I’ve seen were generally positive given the very modest cost when new (well under $20K). I’m pretty sure there was an EV version of the Spark too, with modest range.
I like Jason’s fondue-on-demand idea, but then again, I’m a sucker for anything involving cheese. I’d imagine such a vehicle would be sort of ideal for delivering ANY kind of food (not just pizza) that benefits from staying warm, so this would be great for that, provided it got used often enough to justify the expense.
I had a boss who has a Spark. Still. She bought it new and absolutely loves it. She’s got a bit of a counterculture streak, and got a kick out of not driving a giant SUV or luxury car like the other execs.
They’re supposed to be peppy and responsive enough to be fun, especially at around-town speeds. Me personally, I approve of anything out-of-the-norm, simply as a matter of principle. 🙂
I had to drive a spark for work when they were new. They are not responsive or fun, at all. Not even a little. The early ones (like the one I drove) had a 4spd auto hooked to that tiny, naturally aspirated engine and it was tear inducingly slow. On the plus side, it actually had room for 4 adults, but merging into traffic when fully loaded like that was something to fear. It got decent fuel economy and seemed to hold up to the abuses of every rando working at that place, so it seemed like solid, cheap transportation. But not fun.
I also was one of the lucky few to drive the Spark EV, and yes, its range was bad, about 100 miles. But this was one of the first modern electric cars, and 100 miles was okay. That said, the instant torque, low center of gravity made THIS Spark actually fun and responsive. They did a good job of tuning the suspension and steering to make this a peppy little thing. You can definitely tell the Bolt took a lot from this and just did it better. Night and day difference from the ICE Spark to the EV Spark.
Now, back to the pizza Spark thing, I would rock that. I consume way too much coffee and like it at that temperature just below mouth burning so I feel this could help me there.
The Spark reviews that I’ve seen on Youtube and elsewhere, that have offered some praise for the Spark as a quirky and even entertaining urban runabout, were testing manual versions of the car. I’d not expect ANY entry-level car from ANY manufacturer, equipped with a miniscule ICE engine AND then saddled with an automatic (even a traditional one, let alone one of Nissan’s awful CVTs for example) to be fun to drive. As mentioned, I’ve never driven a Spark or Sonic (at least not that I can recall… my memory is far from perfect) so I’m more than happy to take your word for it that an automatic-equipped Spark is unpleasant.
To me, 100 miles of range is enough for 98% of the daily driving that I do, which is why early and/or small battery EVs like the BMW i3 and Mazda MX-30 are so appealing to me (given their price as used cars). Heck, I’d even include VW’s eGolf on that list of good value-for-money shortish-range used EVs if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve owned a number of VWs including one for over two decades, and after those experiences I doubt I’ll ever buy another one. They’re just too trying (in cost and effort) to keep running as they get old. I know this applies to LOTS of cars from various manufacturers but a 20+ year old VW seems (in my anecdotal/personal experience) to be considerably more of a PITA than a 20 year old Toyota or Honda in terms of ease-of-service and parts cost (to pick a couple of extreme examples for comparison there). 😉
Semi-off-topic: the second gen Honda Fit sport (with a manual) was fun to drive and had all that room in back. I’m genuinely sorry I didn’t buy one back when they were new… now, it’s practically impossible to find one that hasn’t been thrashed.
I do imagine the manual equipped Spark to be at least a little bit engaging, I wish I could have driven one of those.
And you are right, 100 miles of range is very reasonable for most people, its almost enough for my daily commute (70 miles). I say almost, because I remember learning all the potential downsides of BEVs when I drove that Spark EV. Most notably, that cold weather took a chunk out of that range and would have made it a serious adventure trying to get 70 miles out of it in standard MI winter. To that point, the Spark EV was only sold in California so this largely was avoided, but I was working at a GM supplier in MI, so I was one of a small number of people to experience those low rolling resistance tires in snow…..
I can agree on VWs, I had a 95 Jetta and it was okay, but I got that whole “owning a VW” thing out of my system and would gladly take a Toyota or Honda over VW for reliability.
Can’t argue against the Fit, just seemed like great little cars. I personally enjoy my manual Cruze hatch for the same basic reasons, though I have had to modify it in order to make its worst offenses bearable.
I admit having felt some urge to try that Cruise diesel (in the hatch form, with a manual, if such a thing was possible) but it’s probably for the best that I never did. Seen so many mixed reviews.
I didn’t know the Spark EV was CA only… I saw a few of them on the road, but didn’t really know much about them, other than that they were inexpensive… I think they were the only EV with an MSRP under $20K for a while there.
I do gather that the Mazda MX-30 (which is sort of an all-electric version of their popular compact SUV, the CX-30 …both being based on the Mazda 3 platform) was also sold only in CA, and only from ’21-’23 I think. I’ve actually seen a couple of these on the road too, but from any distance they’re easily mistaken for the ubiquitous CX-30 (unless you see it with the doors open: it’s got rear suicide doors and no B-pillar, just like the BMW i3/i3s).
I think they only sold about 600 MX-30s in the US in total, though (I *think*) they’re actually STILL for sale elsewhere in the world, where they also get/got it in hybrid/plug-in hybrid versions, complete with a rotary Wankel range extender (sort of like the i3 was offered in REx versions equipped with a two-cylinder scooter engine installed as a generator to self-recharge the drive battery).
As you can probably tell, the MX-30 is my current object of desire: weird, extremely rare, derided by most auto journos, not fast as other electric cars, on the low-end of early EV range, etc… Plus, it’s got a lovely (and being an EV, quirky) interior and came in that Mazda metallic red that gives everyone the hots. How could I NOT want one? 😉
You can get them for about $15-20K now (down from their MSRP of about $35-40K when new just a few years ago). That’s still a bit rich for an impulse purchase (for me) so I’ll have to wait a bit and find out if the desire fades.
I have an M400 and I am obsessed with it. Compared to the M300 (which this is based on), it’s a much nicer place to be on long trips and the LV7 has quite a bit more kick to it than the old S-TEC II engine. By the time the M400 was released, GM had finally stopped with the “lifetime transmission fluid” nonsense in the CVT-equipped models, making them fairly reliable too.
That said, the M300 is a bucket list car for me, but in the India-only diesel version (badged as the Chevy Beat).
“Lada Gaga”
I didn’t realize Lady Gaga was into Russian cars…
Whatever happened with that YouTuber who bought a wrecked Domino’s pizza delivery car at auction and fixed it up on his channel? Samcrac was the name of the YouTube channel. That was a few years ago…
The last I saw he still had it sitting the the weeds. I think legally he can’t reference domino’s for it. Quite a crazy story for being overly litigious. There is another guy Auto Auction Rebuilds who got a hold of one I don’t know if it had the oven or not I think he just dumped his.
I would use it to slice through traffic.
Really though, this seems like the perfect car for the witch in Hansel and Gretel.
Gotta say as well, I’m DIGGING all the weekend content!
Find a distillery- and brewery-rich area and drive around providing custom wax seals for the bottles, similar to what Maker’s Mark does.
If nobody says Colorado College Campus Cannabis Brownie truck you’re doing it wrong.
I don’t know, pizza delivery vehicles have pretty high standards”
“ The Deliverator’s car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator’s car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car’s tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator’s car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady’s thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.”
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/172832/snow-crash-by-neal-stephenson/9780593599730/excerpt
For some reason I’m hearing this in the late, great Andre Braugher’s voice. I haven’t read Snow Crash yet, although I rather liked Seveneves and Cryptonomicon. I might have to change that based on this passage alone.
Snow Crash and The Diamond Age are great. Sort of an echo of the Beats in the way the language flows.
Steve Buscemi was originally set to direct the William Burroughs movie “Queer” and had spent time with Burroughs in preparation, and does an amazing Burroughs voice, and I sort of hear that.
Also, you don’t have to take notes to keep track of the plots like in Cryptonomicon and the later books.
I’m gonna use it to be a mobile notary and add a wax seal to all my stuff in addition to the stamp
Maybe it’s too obvious of a solution but why wouldn’t you just sell pizza out of it?
Is it DiGiornos or delivery? Why not both?
When the Pizza Hut in American Falls, Idaho closed, a plan was hatched to buy the building and rebrand it as Pizza AF.
The menu would have of course included Pepperoni AF, Sausage AF, Supreme AF and various other obvious options.
Alas, someone else bought and opened their own pizza place (with less creative naming, I might add), but I can definitely imagine this thing running around south eastern Idaho with Pizza AF plastered all over it.
Um, be a GOD among parents at the kids’ sporting events. Timmy’s mom can bring orange slices and Gatorade. YOU will be bring warm pizza and 48 liters of caffeinated sugar water.
Timmy may think you’re a god with that setup, but his parents will surely accuse you of being Satan.
Only because they didn’t think of it first.
I think you misspelled ‘SANTA.”
And you left Timmy at home. Because it seats one.
Its a great commuter for work, you can just leave you lunch in it safe from thieving coworkers.
I wonder if the Bishop could repurpose this into an RV for one.
What could you put in the place of the warming oven?
Pretty sure that’d just be a roach coach.
Three words:
Mobile.
Pet.
Sauna.
You’re welcome.
Now I’m hungry
Finally, someone developing a solution to the hordes of youths masticating delicate bits off of our nation’s most precious wax art. This is the essential thought-leadership that I depend on Torch, and more broadly, The Autopian for.
Hey man, you got dem digits?
Yeah dude! 2 fingers and a thumb off Harry Styles and bonus: Babs’ nose!
Righteous!
Nom nom nom…
I am outing myself as a millennial with weird interests here (as if the combination of driving a Spark and frequenting the Autopian didn’t already do that), but I can never read the word “masticating” without instantly being reminded of My Immortal, the worst Harry Potter fanfiction ever written.