Boing Boing Doesn't Think Much of Our Amazing Automobile-Sized Refrigerator

Some people have no vision.

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"What good is an automobile refrigerator that only works when the car is running?" So asks Boing Boing in a recent post highlighting one of the "low moments in how-to history," these plans to build an automobile-sized refrigerator. Writer Matt Maranian doesn't bother to ID the source of this silliness, but I happen to spend a lot of time clicking through the wonderful and the inexplicable from the Popular Mechanics archive, and I would know that technical illustration style and typeface anywhere.

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The project comes from the July 1958 issue of PM—a time when men, apparently reaching peak post-war affluent boredom, tore apart refrigerators and reassembled them in the backs of station wagons. "Considered an accessory for automobiles of the future, an electric refrigerator can be installed now, if you make it yourself," PM said to open the article.

That's the kind of can-do spirit I can get behind.

Now, as Maranian points out, there are a few problems with this design. For one thing, you're putting an entire refrigerator in the back of a car, which presumably cuts into its available cargo space. Furthermore, the compressor would draw 6 to 25 amperes to keep your cold ones cold, so writer Richard Hanson warns readers not to run the thing for long with the car shut off or they'll drain the battery. As a result, his creation is probably good mostly for keeping those bottles of Coke cold on a long Labor Day road trip. Take the automobile-sized refrigerator to a tailgate and you'll be chugging your Busch Lights before they have the chance to warm up (which, honestly, you're probably doing anyway).

Perhaps this isn't the most practical invention. And even now, 56 years later, you'd still be better served carrying an excellent cooler. Yet I love the automobile-sized refrigerator because some kooky dad somewhere in America tore apart his old refrigerator and hacked it into the back of his jalopy, probably just to show the world that he could or to troll his teenagers. And who doesn't want to shop for a small motor at a war surplus store, as PM recommends for this project?

Look man, sometimes you build something just because you can.

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