Weird News: Brazilian Homeless Man from Paraíba Builds His Own Car — Out of Junk

I’m inspired. This is amazing….

This is the article from MSNBC in English, but if you would like to read the original Portuguese version from Globo, click Here.

Homeless man builds his own car — out of junk

With no mechanical training, he scrounges together the ‘shrimpmobile’

could you build a car out of that?

This is Orismar de Souza, a homeless man in Brazil, who decided to build the car he couldn’t buy using junk, spare parts and a hammer and chisel. Four years later, the “shrimpmobile” has him back on his feet.

Souza, 35, had to panhandle in the Brazilian city of São José de Piranha and go hungry for four months in order to raise the initial $270 he needed for sheet metal, which he cut into shape using a borrowed hammer and chisel. He scrounged a 125cc motorcycle engine, and gathered other junked parts from all over the region.

 

The next goal for the builder of this car? Saving enough money to have a garage in which to park it.

 

 

While Souza had decorated and traded metal cans as a child in exchange for food and clothes, he had no other experience in working with metal, and almost gave up when the steelwork became too difficult.

“Nobody believed, everybody laughed at me,” Souza told Globo.com. “I was very humbled by this, but I won and I built my car alone with my own hands. ”

By December, Souza was able to replace the motorcycle engine’s kickstarter with a car ignition, and add in a gearbox with reverse. The mostly Fiat shrimpmobile can reach 50 mph on the highway, and Souza has been able to use it to find a home and a job in the local sugarcane fields.

Souza says his next goal will be to save enough money to have a garage for his creation. We wouldn’t bet against him.

(Via: MSNBC)