Posted on 06/12/2012 10:13:45 AM PDT by njslim
According to Merriam-Webster, ingenuity can be defined as "skill or cleverness in devising or combining" or "cleverness or aptness of design or contrivance." We'd say that's an apt description of a Frenchman named Emile who reportedly found himself stranded in the deserts of Northwest Africa after breaking a frame rail and a suspension swingarm underneath his Citroën 2CV.
What to do? Why, disassemble the broken hulk and build yourself a motorcycle from its pile of parts, of course! As the story goes, Emile was able to use the inventive machine to escape the desert, though not before convincing the local authorities that he wasn't an insurgent and paying a fine for importing a non-conforming vehicle...
Sounds like something straigh out of Mac Gyver or "FLIGHT OF THE PHOENOX"
Flight of the Phoenix (the original with Jimmy Stewart) is one of my favorite movies. The Stunt Pilot, Paul Mantz, died making that movie.
Holy cow! What a wild looking machine. Unbelievable.
I’d say he had a working knowledge of the Mad Max series too!
Yea - in SAHARA by Clive Cussler (one of my favorite authors) the main characters Dirk Pitt/Al Giordano build
a sand yacht from crashed plane
Finally! A good use for a 2CV!
He couldn’t repair a broken frame rail so he built a complete new machine, yeah, right! Very nice “mad max” type art work project, though. Does not appear to be a drivable vehicle.
Amusing Car Ping.
Wouldn't you know it... in real life, Emile's profession is to design model motorcycles. Be careful though, don' go up to him and call them toys... his designs are scaled-down exact working models of the big thing!
Lets see him do that with a '69 Chevy Impala.
Agreed, conspicuously absent from the picture is the method of driving a wheel. Also, where did the motorcycle handlebar come from?
***The Stunt Pilot, Paul Mantz, died making that movie.***
I remember seeing still photos of his homemade(for the movie) plane breaking up.
Wonder where he got the welding equipment out there in the desert?
you just know that on the next season of Top Gear they are going to be building these and then racing them across North Africa.
Truth or fiction? He must have had more than the usual amount of tools in his crappy 2CV.
I bit, but a wrench-twister buddy called BS on the whole works, based on his analysis of the photo.
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