Doing the grocery run and growing frustrated at the realization that you can’t fit all the stuff you bought (and probably don’t even need) into the trunk of your car is a matter of the past with the Shopper Chopper.
Here is the world’s fastest shopping cart (though not officially so), the only shopping cart in the U.S. that is fully road legal, and also an impressive custom build. The Shopper Chopper is an actual shopping cart blown up to size and powered by a Chevrolet V8 engine, which makes it a solid fit for autoevolution’s Chevrolet Month running throughout November.
The Shopper Chopper hails from Pennsylvania and has actually been around for eight years. Locally, it’s long attained legend status, showing up at all types of events, whether they’re charity functions or advertising opportunities, car shows, and city parades. It’s been featured in TV and online ads, and was even used by TV presenter and restaurateur Guy Fieri for promotion purposes.
This partnership with Fieri landed the Shopper Chopper an appearance on Jay Leno’s Garage, with a snippet of that included in the video below. As a fun side note, Fieri made it sound like the cart was his, which goes to show just how “real” what you see on TV is.
The cart actually belongs to Calvin VanSant and his son-in-law Brent Musser, who also built it. They got the idea for it way back in 2010, when Brent was looking for a novel way to advertise his grocery business. They thought a giant, rolling shopping cart would do the trick, and boy were they right.
After they put the thing together to see if it could work (this was their first time at building a vehicle, let alone one as special as this), they took it apart and reassembled it to make into a real car. This and the finishes touches, the paintjob, the polishing and what not, pushed the reveal of the giant shopping cart back by two years.
At the end of those years, the two knew they had something special on their hands, so they decided to use it for local parades. In time, they started renting it for ad space (which they still do today), and found out first-hand that the Shopper Chopper had a promising future in promotional appearances.
With all the media coverage this custom build has been getting over the years, neither Calvin nor Brent ever went into the specifics of how it was put together. Calvin did say though that one of the biggest challenges was putting all the usual car parts together, in such a way as to still have the final vehicle look good. But this was a walk in the park compared to getting it registered for road use: “Paperwork is often harder than metalwork.”
The official webpage of the cart notes that it’s 9.2 feet (2.8 meters) high, 12.3 feet (3.7 meters) long and has a curb weight of 2,950 pounds (1,338 kg). Seating capacity is for four people, four in the basket and two higher up, where the controls are. If you remove the seats in the basket, you can carry 146 paper bags in there, so yes, it’s still very much a shopping cart.
Power comes from a 340 hp small-block Chevrolet 350 engine, mated to a CM TH350 3-speed automatic transmission. There’s custom 4-link suspension with ride-tech shockwaves in the rear, and aluminum independent front suspension with ride-tech shockwaves in the front. The body is chrome and polished aluminum, and there are over 800 LED lights tucked underneath to make it glow in the dark. Oh, and it can also blow bubbles.
Shopping Chopper is registered in Pennsylvania as a convertible passenger vehicle and is road-legal throughout the U.S. This still makes it a very strange, unusual and eye-catching appearance, which Calvin often says is the best part of driving the thing: it puts smiles on people’s faces and he’s all for that.
Speaking of driving it, the Shopping Chopper is surprisingly fast. Calvin once said it can cruise at 50 mph (80.4 kph) but he’s taken it as fast as 80 mph (129 kph) on the highway. Seeing how this thing is open from all sides, this truly puts a new spin on the old “wind in your hair” phrase.
The Shopper Chopper hails from Pennsylvania and has actually been around for eight years. Locally, it’s long attained legend status, showing up at all types of events, whether they’re charity functions or advertising opportunities, car shows, and city parades. It’s been featured in TV and online ads, and was even used by TV presenter and restaurateur Guy Fieri for promotion purposes.
This partnership with Fieri landed the Shopper Chopper an appearance on Jay Leno’s Garage, with a snippet of that included in the video below. As a fun side note, Fieri made it sound like the cart was his, which goes to show just how “real” what you see on TV is.
After they put the thing together to see if it could work (this was their first time at building a vehicle, let alone one as special as this), they took it apart and reassembled it to make into a real car. This and the finishes touches, the paintjob, the polishing and what not, pushed the reveal of the giant shopping cart back by two years.
At the end of those years, the two knew they had something special on their hands, so they decided to use it for local parades. In time, they started renting it for ad space (which they still do today), and found out first-hand that the Shopper Chopper had a promising future in promotional appearances.
The official webpage of the cart notes that it’s 9.2 feet (2.8 meters) high, 12.3 feet (3.7 meters) long and has a curb weight of 2,950 pounds (1,338 kg). Seating capacity is for four people, four in the basket and two higher up, where the controls are. If you remove the seats in the basket, you can carry 146 paper bags in there, so yes, it’s still very much a shopping cart.
Power comes from a 340 hp small-block Chevrolet 350 engine, mated to a CM TH350 3-speed automatic transmission. There’s custom 4-link suspension with ride-tech shockwaves in the rear, and aluminum independent front suspension with ride-tech shockwaves in the front. The body is chrome and polished aluminum, and there are over 800 LED lights tucked underneath to make it glow in the dark. Oh, and it can also blow bubbles.
Speaking of driving it, the Shopping Chopper is surprisingly fast. Calvin once said it can cruise at 50 mph (80.4 kph) but he’s taken it as fast as 80 mph (129 kph) on the highway. Seeing how this thing is open from all sides, this truly puts a new spin on the old “wind in your hair” phrase.