A Dream Come True After 11 Years, Engineer Finally Has His Homemade Car

When Eric Thompson began work on his dream car, he was 19 years old, single, and a college student.

Now married, with two kids, and 30 years old, Thompson finally has finished the project.

Since 1985, the Hayden engineer has been working late nights and weekends to build a car of his own design. At 6 foot 7, he doesn’t fit in any little roadster.

So he yanked the engine and transmission from a 1965 Corvair. He welded a frame. He bolted on a steering column from a Fiat, and a clutch and brake system from a Ford Courier.

The windshield was made for a Dodge Omni; the seats came from a Honda Accord. The windshield defroster is from a Studebaker Lark, and Thompson can’t even remember what kind of car the windshield wiper came from.

Then Thompson set about molding the car’s body, made of foam and fiberglass.

He worked as time and money allowed. At one point he sold seats he’d bought in order to pay bills after the birth of the couple’s daughter. Later, the girl would putter around the garage while her father worked on his dream.

“There were times when I didn’t touch it for a couple of years,” he said. “I’d need $1,000, or I’d get frustrated.”

Sometimes he’d sit in the seat, with just the chassis around him, drinking a beer and wondering what it would be like to drive the machine.

On July 1, he found out. That was the deadline his wife, Samantha, had given him to finish the project. That evening, the windshield just installed, they went out to dinner in a car still lacking doors.

“We were driving up Fourth Street and this young couple pulled up and said ‘That’s so cool,”’ said Samantha Thompson.

It was a chilly night, and on the way home, Eric Thompson turned on the heater.

Nothing happened.

“I’d carpeted over the heater duct,” he said, chuckling.

He took out his pocket knife and cut through the carpeting, and they continued on their way.

In the ensuing few weeks, the couple has grown used to stares from passing motorists.

“My wife’s idea for license plates is ‘What’s That?”’ he said.

He said the little white car is exactly the sportster he wanted.

“Anybody can build a muscle car. I wanted something that handled real well,” he said. “On curves, it stays flatter than flat. Hardly any body roll at all.”

It’s also a fast car.

“With the doors on, it should do about 135 or 140,” he said. “It’ll go at least 100, I know that much. Your ears start flapping around, but you can do it.”

Samantha Thompson likes to drive the car - still unnamed - around town.

“It’s a relief to have it done, but now he’s bored,” she said of her husband. “He wonders what he’ll do now.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo