The World’s Biggest Ford Festiva Is 10 Feet Wide, Has 14 Cupholders, And Requires An Oversize Permit

The old Ford Festiva was a humble little car. It had everything you needed and almost nothing that you didn’t, and was simple enough that you could turn it into anything you wanted. One YouTuber has taken Festiva modifications to the extremes by building both the tiniest Ford Festiva and the absolute largest. The biggest spans ten feet wide, has a home air conditioner, an auxiliary power unit, and 14 cupholders. Oh, and it’s so wide that it needs an oversize permit to be legal.

The Ford Festiva is one of those cars that have transcended its original purpose. Designed by Mazda, built by Kia, and badged by Ford, the Festiva was sold under various names from 1986 to 2002. Here in America, we saw the cutie from the 1988 to the 1993 model years. The Festiva was really just a simple car: four wheels, two working headlights, four functional seats, and manual everything. Early versions didn’t even have fuel injection.

Decades after its discontinuation, the Festiva has gained an endearing cult following of people who appreciate how robust, cute, and efficient the little car is. Others love how easy a Festiva is to modify. There are people who restore Festivas, off-road Festivas, turn Festivas into go-karts, and even collect Festivas. Even I’m a part of the Festiva fan club.

The guy doing the most extreme mods with Festivas is none other than Tyler Fever, who goes by Prop Department on YouTube. Fever’s schtick is learning engineering without a degree by doing hands-on projects. Fever was first known as the mad mind behind WhistlinDiesel’s crazy builds, but now he does his own things. He’s done a little bit of everything from a jet-powered Honda Acty and a Tesla-powered boat to a heavy-lift hot air balloon and even a replica of the Killdozer. But he’s perhaps most famous for what he’s done with Ford Festivas, as he’s made both the tiniest and the widest Festivas possible. Here’s the video for the thinnest Festiva:

When Your Engine Is Wider Than Your Car

Building the thinnest Festiva involved gutting a 1988 Festiva donor, then cutting it down with a laser until all that was left was essentially the two sides of the vehicle. Then, Fever welded the two sides together.

Since the car was now something like a quarter of its original width, the original parts couldn’t just be bolted back in. Fever had to slice the rear subframe down, then affixed a custom-fabricated rear axle to it. The car’s so small that the sole brake disc is inboard of the wheels!

The car’s absolute tiny footprint is illustrated by the fact that the car’s width is narrower than its own engine, which means that propulsion has to be equally as diminutive. For that, Fever snagged an E Ride Pro electric dirt bike for its motor and battery.

From here, Fever cut the steering gear up and reinstalled it, then cut the hatch into a fraction of its size, then installed that, too.

Some paint, wiring, plastic windows later, and the thinnest Festiva was finished. Fever calls this thing the thinnest street-legal car. Austin Coulson’s Guinness World Record-holding “smallest roadworthy car” might be smaller, but the Festiva is so much cooler!

That car went pretty crazy on social media and YouTube as perhaps Fever’s craziest build yet. Fever also drove it around in public, where people couldn’t stop talking about it and taking pictures of it.

So, what does the man who built the smallest Festiva do for his next Festiva shenanigans? Go the opposite direction! Here’s the build video for the absolute unit of Festiva that Fever recently built:

As Wide As It Can Legally Be

This time, Fever says he nabbed a trio of Festivas for $250 each. All of these cars were pretty ragged, but at least one of them ran and drove. For the video, Fever did a silly skit where he tried to fit a two-by-four into the car the wide way, while also joking that the car’s so narrow that he could touch the passenger door while driving.

This time, the Festiva was gutted, had its front and rear windows removed, and then was cut in half. For width, Fever went extreme. His choice to make a car that was exactly 10 feet wide was strategic.

In America, a standard passenger vehicle can generally be up to 102 inches (8.5 feet) wide without anything special. The same regulations also apply to commercial vehicles. You’ll find buses, semi-trucks, and motorhomes taking up all of their allotted 102 inches on the highway. You can go wider to ten feet, so long as you get an oversize permit and commercial insurance.

Any wider, however, and per the state of Tennessee, you would need to hang an Oversize Load banner on the car, put flags at the car’s widest parts, have special lighting at night, and have an escort car. Have you ever seen a car leading the way ahead of a seriously huge load on a highway? Yep, that’s an escort car. Moving a vehicle or load this large also necessitates having the driving route pre-approved through the state. So ten feet was the widest Fever could go without running into the extra requirements.

Widening the Festiva appeared to be one of the easy parts. Fever welded in square steel tubing, then made a floor out of 10-gauge steel and a roof out of 18-gauge steel.

Reassembling the car was sort of the opposite of the tiniest Festiva. Instead of slicing the original suspension into pieces, Fever had to extend the parts across the vast expanse of bodywork. The rear beam, for example, became comically long:

The steering also had to be extended to reach the other side. An amusing feature about this Festiva is that Fever stole the steering wheel and shaft from one of the other Festivas, giving the wide one steering from both the left side and the right side of the car. The placement of the engine really illustrates how hilariously wide the car is:

Fever also fabricated a new hood, added more tubing to the engine bay, and then reassembled more of the car. The interior and the grille were especially fascinating, because to make an eight-foot-wide grille, Fever modeled a huge grille on a computer and then created it using a 3D printer. The dashboard extension was another 3D-printed part.

Skipping ahead, the build was finished by installing new carpet in the interior, putting in the seats, painting the car, and making new, super-wide plastic windows. I also love the addition of a household window air-conditioner, which is powered by a generator that lives next to the engine and the fuel tank under the hood.

There was also the most important part, the right side’s CV axle, which had to be extended so far that it became longer than some rear-drive cars’ driveshafts!

The finished car is simply immense. Here’s the wide lad taking up most of a city street:

\I also like how the car still has four seats, like stock, but now all four seats are front seats:

Amazingly, Fever used the car like a daily driver, taking the wide Festiva on a 400-mile road trip on the highway, on country roads, and even in the city. The car got attention everywhere, including from multiple cops, who pulled him over. Granted, Fever wasn’t doing himself any favors by running a fake license plate when he had the real one in the car with him. Still, even with the fake plate, the cops had so much fun that Fever didn’t even get a ticket.

I also love the bit where Fever put 14 Buc-ee’s cups on the dashboard and the gag of putting a whole load of lumber in the trunk. I’m most surprised that this car managed to do an entire road trip without falling apart. Amazingly, it’ll even go over 70 mph while loaded up with lumber, three guys, and a lot of toilet paper.

Probably The Widest Car, With Some Caveats

Fever says that this is the widest street-legal car. That, of course, is technically correct. Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan has a custom super-huge Dodge Power Wagon that was 64 times its original size. That truck is allegedly road legal in Abu Dhabi. However, that is a truck, not a car. Also, these vehicles sort of stretch the definition of “road legal,” anyway, since I’m sure some jurisdictions wouldn’t be fond of a plastic windshield or the car’s new structure.

But I’m not going to be a wet blanket here; this car is so funny. I wish I lived anywhere near Tennessee, because I’d be begging Fever to take it for a spin for a car review. This is one of those cars that would probably be a pain to live with, but a total ball on every single drive. I’m not sure I’d be able to drive this without bursting out laughing until I cry before I reach my destination.

I love harmless little projects like this. Nobody is getting hurt, nothing’s getting obliterated, and there are endless smiles for miles. So, good on Fever’s Prop Department on this build. He’s captured the hearts and the imaginations of tens of millions of people on the Internet and so many others around Tennessee. I think I want to see more friend-shaped cars grow in size now.

Be sure to watch more Prop Department, because the video is far cooler than my short summary here!

Top graphic image: Screenshot: Prop Department/YouTube