You know what would be a nice way to end your difficult and productive work week? How about by watching a man painstakingly build a like 8/10-scale replica of a Ford F-150 Raptor for his dad? Out of wood. Fittingly for an F-150, the project seems to have taken 150 days, and was executed by the remarkably talented Vietnam-based woodworker Trương Văn Đạo who runs the YouTube channel ND Woodworking Art. Even better, this truck actually drives!

The truck uses a solid rear axle with an integrated electric motor/differential unit that looks an awful lot like what my Changli ultra-cheap EV uses. The axle is bolted to leaf springs that are in turn bolted to a square-tube chassis that Đạo fabricated from scratch. Here, just watch the video:

Holy crap, right? That’s absurdly impressive. Look how great that looks! It must be heavy as hell, and I can’t imagine that thing can move that fast, but still, who cares – it’s remarkable. It all appears to be done with hand tools and eyeballing and sketching, no fancy CAD or CNC machines at all, at least that I can see here. It’s rolling wooden sculpture, like a Henry Moore that you can haul bags of peat moss in.

The lights are confusing me; I think they’re too small to be actual F-150 units, so what are they? My best guess is they come from one of the Chinese low speed electric vehicles that are made to look like an F-150, something like one of these:

Also, look at how the steering wheel is being made from a photo and a cylinder of wood, carefully carved and shaped:

It’s astounding.

Đạo has a lot of experience building these sorts of electric wooden vehicles, which he’s built for his kids before, as you can see here:

Look a that! I bet it feels just wonderful to run your hand down the curve of that fender. And look at this Audi concept car, complete with lots of lights and opening panels:

That one has wooden tires, even!

This is an odd fringe subset of DIY automotive work. It’s about as DIY as it gets, since the only pre-made components are the small electric motors and some suspension elements, and lighting and electrical bits. Oh, and sometimes wheels and tires. But that’s it!

This straddles an interesting line between furniture and sculpture and vehicle, and I’m absolutely here for it. Great work, Mr. Đạo.

This Absurd Wooden Kit Car Was Made By The Aston Martin Lagonda Designer

We Need A Name And Some Rules For Two-Faced Cars

How I Would Design An Electric Version Of A Classic American Wagon: A Car Designer Sketches Your Ideas