Adorable Daredevil Father Has Constructed the World's Fastest Stroller Out of Sheet Metal and Love
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Here’s an existential question for you to ponder: As a son or daughter of the Road Warrior, would you expect your father to build you a pram that could go 0 to 50 in under 30 seconds? Obviously the answer is, “Yes, unless he didn’t really love me or already made me a dog stroller sled and trained a team of ten adorable Australian cattle dogs to pull me around and be my best friends.”
Professional Mad Max patriarch Colin Furze quite clearly loves his newborn son, which is why he’s constructed the world’s fastest pram — “a twin-exhaust, 10-horsepower, gasoline-fueled” masterwork that can almost reach highway speeds and will most certainly turn his four-month-old son into the Vin Diesel of his generation, which is every father’s secret dream. Popular Science offers a pretty thorough rundown of the stroller’s specs, as well as the death-defying impetus that led Furze to incorporate the word “badass” into his son’s lexicon as soon as possible:
The build began with a baby carriage that Furze and his girlfriend, Charlotte, bought. He carefully measured every piece to construct a motorized look-alike. Thanks to a previous experiment, Furze had a steel roll cage lying around, which he cut and welded into the new stroller’s skeleton.
Accelerating and braking via foot pedals could send Furze off course on rough roads, so he set all controls into a handlebar … and built a stable platform for the driver to stand on. His first test-drive melted a set of skateboard wheels he’d attached to the platform. “It was quite pathetic,” Furze says. A few days later, he tried again with plastic caster wheels; that time, road vibration rattled his feet numb. Furze eventually achieved a cushy ride with thick tires from an old mobility scooter.
Of course, Furze wouldn’t dare strap an infant into what is essentially a tricked-out death machine, but that doesn’t stop him from terrorizing passersby by swaddling a doll in a Union Jack and nestling into the pram for a little jaunt in the park. Don’t worry, though, because wee little Jake has probably inherited a death urge or two from his father, who in 2006 earned a Guinness World Records blurb for lighting the then-largest fire (50,000-square feet) by launching a rocket at the kindling. What cool shit has your father done, hmm?