Photo: Craiglist South Coast
Have you ever spotted a funky-looking car parked somewhere and thought to yourself, it has to be a kit car? Well, what if we told you that sometimes, what looks like a kit vehicle is actually the long-forgotten ambitions of a start-up company that genuinely wanted to reinvent the wheel. This is the case with this 1990-something WorldStar utility truck. A light pickup so rare and obscure that finding information about even cursory parts of its existence outside fringe forum posts is next to impossible.
On first impressions, it's easy to think the Worldstar is a Dodge Ram on a combination of LSD and post-concussion syndrome. The quite Dodge-like front grille does little to help matters there. But under the hood of the WorldStar is nothing Chrysler-related. Instead, it's the same air-cooled, four-cylinder 1600 cc boxer engine out of a 1974 Volkswagen Beetle, complete with a '74 Beetle's four-speed manual gearbox. From what we could gather, the WorldStar is a product of the short-lived World Transport Authority based out of El Cajon, California.
Founded by a man called Douglas Norman, World Transport Authority is thought to have tried securing production contracts for the WorldStar utility vehicle in exotic places like China, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Columbia. At one point, it's thought that Zastava, makers of the Yugoslav icon, the Yugo, was contacted and offered an opportunity to supply drivetrains with the engines and transmissions shipped paired together for the WorldStar program. Whether this partnership yielded any results isn't quite known.
What is known is that as far as the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles is concerned, this WorldStar is a 1974 Volkswagen, essentially assuring that what's parked before us here is a West German drivetrain and not Yugoslav. Though, once again, it kind of looks like a kit car from most angles, the tube-frame chassis, heavy-duty doors, and fiberglass body appear to be in pretty phenomenal shape. The interior is charmingly spartan but still as clean as the day it left the factory, and the odometer only reads 12,000 miles on the clock since it left the factory over 20 years ago.
We'll give special props to the solid-looking black wheels with silver hub caps and rear bedliner made with what looks like real wood and diamond plate. So the current owner says this peppy little truck can do around 70 mph (112.6 kph); one can only presume the fuel economy is also absolutely fantastic. As a quirky around-town daily driver for an eccentric fellow who prefers odd, interesting cars to horsepower monsters and canyon carvers, this is your white whale, your knight in shining armor, the pound-for-pound most delightfully bizarre little pickup truck we've seen in what feels like ages around here. It can all be yours for $15,000.
Founded by a man called Douglas Norman, World Transport Authority is thought to have tried securing production contracts for the WorldStar utility vehicle in exotic places like China, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Columbia. At one point, it's thought that Zastava, makers of the Yugoslav icon, the Yugo, was contacted and offered an opportunity to supply drivetrains with the engines and transmissions shipped paired together for the WorldStar program. Whether this partnership yielded any results isn't quite known.
What is known is that as far as the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles is concerned, this WorldStar is a 1974 Volkswagen, essentially assuring that what's parked before us here is a West German drivetrain and not Yugoslav. Though, once again, it kind of looks like a kit car from most angles, the tube-frame chassis, heavy-duty doors, and fiberglass body appear to be in pretty phenomenal shape. The interior is charmingly spartan but still as clean as the day it left the factory, and the odometer only reads 12,000 miles on the clock since it left the factory over 20 years ago.
We'll give special props to the solid-looking black wheels with silver hub caps and rear bedliner made with what looks like real wood and diamond plate. So the current owner says this peppy little truck can do around 70 mph (112.6 kph); one can only presume the fuel economy is also absolutely fantastic. As a quirky around-town daily driver for an eccentric fellow who prefers odd, interesting cars to horsepower monsters and canyon carvers, this is your white whale, your knight in shining armor, the pound-for-pound most delightfully bizarre little pickup truck we've seen in what feels like ages around here. It can all be yours for $15,000.
Google News