Burnout Level Russia: Snow-Drifting a Soviet-Age SUV on 1,200-Lb Cable Reel Wheels

Wood set the world in motion when the first wheel was built, and it endured as the primary source of raw material for all sorts of vehicles for millennia. Today, most transportation devices have veered toward the iron age and its derivatives (the aluminum age, the carbon fiber age, the glass age, the titanium age, and so on).

Wood has been relegated to primarily decorative purposes in today’s cars, with expensive essence inserts held to a high value (literally) by the world’s top-tier luxury brands. But what if lumber found other applications in a modern automobile?

Like, say, oversized wheels made of timber. If this is oddly beginning to sound like ‘What the Russia…?’ you’re on the right path to hellumination. The following is yet another Garage 54 project – lately, the Land of Cold inhabitants have rolled out mass-produced videos, and the one below is their latest.

In short, take a previously-denatured Lada Niva small SUV all-terrain 4x4 relic and slam cable reels instead of the usual wheels. Don’t think 15-inch-small rollers, but massive, industrial-grade cylinders 47 inches in diameter (1,193 millimeters, to be accurate).

You might have seen one in person if you ever happened to walk by a site where two-inch (50 mm) thick electrical cables were installed. That’s how they’re stored and hauled from one place to another – rolled on those massive bobbins made of solid wood planks.

The Siberians have to make it through the bitter winter somehow, and laughter is always the best cure for anything – except car addiction. On that, you have to start wrenching, no matter the weather. And that’s how the lads from Novosibirsk, enjoying the beautiful Russian wintertime, put on the artic explorer garment and tested a custom-made cable-reel-wheeled self-propelling vehicle.

The foundation for this project is (or rather started in life as) a Lada Niva, the Russian compact SUV that’s actually built to do off-road things. What exactly happened to the factory design under the Garage 54 ‘abuser-ship’ is of little importance for now. But we should note that the vehicle on which the gargantuan improvised wheels are mounted has negative protection from the elements.

Not only is the driver wholly exposed to the weather – in this case, Siberian freeze – but he is also taking on the full blast of the chill-factor-amplifying air stream created by the movement of the contraption. Granted, it is not that high of a speed – the car’s transmission is set to low range, first gear. But, due to the diameter of the wheels (47 inches, nearly 1.2 meters), the brick-shaped Niva moves on at quite a pace.

As tradition obliges, Garage 54 projects aren’t mainly addressed to ride quality, and this ‘just because we shouldn’t doesn’t mean we won’t’ automotive anarchy of an invention is no exception. To make the massive wood assemblies fit on the car’s hubs, the mechanics welded together two regular steel wheels, rim-on-rim. This provides the necessary steering clearance between the wooden disc and the car’s body. It also kills geometry – you can almost smell the wobble only by looking at the timber assembly.

On compact, slippery snow, the damn thing is about as useful as a scuba diving kit on top of an erupting volcano. The wooden edges, although narrow (two inches, or five centimeters), slip and slide over the snow, and traction leaves the chat as soon as the driver tickles the throttle ever so slightly. So, what is the best thing to do when grip isn’t the number one objective of a build? A donut – or the closest thing to it.

The small 1.7-liter inline four actually has enough torque to overspin the 300-lb (some 137 kg) heavy mass of wood: between 89 and 101 lb-ft / 120 and 137 Nm, depending on the version and model year. Heck, the tangential speed at the edge of the spool’s flange is high enough to get one to tear itself apart.

The ‘burnout’ hits its climax, ripping planks of wood and sending them flying high in the air, missing the driver’s head by a few inches. Oh, and the Niva zombie also got wounded during the fun session – the front right half-shaft decided it was time to wave goodbye to the world and broke clean off.

Vlad Barashenko, the host of the Garage 54 YouTube Channel, puts the blame on metallurgy and reaches the ‘steel fatigue’ verdict. I suspect the Russian engineers didn’t test their prototypes with a 1,000% margin of error, so the ‘aged material’ theory doesn’t exactly hold water (or snow, in this Siberian winter’s case).