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
00:00In Maricopa, Arizona you can find a large collection of small cars.
00:21This is the Dwarf Car Museum and it's all the work of Ernie Adams.
00:29I built the first metal Dwarf Car in 1965 out of nine old refrigerators.
00:37Ernie hand-builds these small vehicles and honed his skills making hundreds of Dwarf racing cars.
00:43From there he progressed to the more time-consuming business of constructing scaled-down replicas of classics.
00:49It was in 1992 I built a street-legal 39 Chevy Dwarf Car that was a complete car.
00:58It had everything the real car had in it.
01:00On the average it takes anywhere from two and a half years to five years to build a car.
01:08That would be somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 hours.
01:12This was my first car ever built as a steel model car.
01:17Something you could ride in and drive.
01:19It's got full instrumentation.
01:22The seats in it fold up like an old Model A so you can walk into the back seat.
01:28Amazingly, Ernie's scaled-down cars are fully road-legal.
01:32My cars are not hard to get street-legal because they're not built from other cars.
01:38They're all built from scratch.
01:40So there's no other car body numbers or anything involved in mine.
01:44People ask me how they ride.
01:46I always tell them they ride like a Corvette.
01:49On a good road they ride real smooth.
01:51On a rough road they're a little choppy.
01:53But they all get out and travel highway speeds, 75, 80 miles an hour all day long.
01:59Ernie is understandably proud of the fact that he builds the cars himself.
02:03Even if people don't always believe him.
02:06The first car I drove down the road and somebody stopped me to ask me about my car.
02:11He said, wow, where'd you get that car?
02:13I said, I didn't find it, I made it.
02:15And he said, you made it?
02:17And he said, wow, you must have a pretty elaborate shop to build something like that.
02:21I said, I live in a trailer park and I built it out behind the house.
02:25He was instantly very upset.
02:28Pretty soon he turned around and walked off and he turned his head and he said,
02:33sir, I've been a body and fender man all my life.
02:35You don't tell me you just go out in the backyard and build something like that.
02:39Away he went.
02:40I was a little embarrassed because I just got chewed out, you know.
02:44But I guess I should have lied to him.
02:47Despite several generous offers,
02:49Ernie insists his creations are not for sale.
02:52I even had a man in California offer to trade me his house.
02:55I have been offered anywhere from $50,000 to $450,000 for one.
03:02But they're not for sale and when you get up that high you're just blowing smoke, so.
03:08Setting up a museum to let the public see the collection was the idea of Ernie's sons.
03:13When people would come in the shop they would naturally say this is like coming into a museum.
03:19So I told them, let's just make it a museum.
03:23I really love to see the people's reactions when they come in.
03:27My favorite is one lady come in and she's speechless.
03:31All she could say was wow and oh my god.
03:33When I see reactions like that from people, it makes it all worth it what we do here.
03:38When we're driving down the road with them, people will come up and they'll hang beside you or behind you.
03:45They're looking at the car or taking pictures of it.
03:48A lot of thumbs up, all kinds of gestures.
03:51With the building seemingly at capacity, does Ernie plan on adding any more cars to his museum?
03:56I'm done building cars right now but I have to finish the last one I'm building.
04:01Everybody says I'll build another one afterwards.
04:03And I know as soon as the last one's done, I'll get antsy and have to start something, so.