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  • In The Beginning...

Carpool mk I

"The Great Canadian Carpool"

All great works of invention have their beginnings in a prototype. Before the famed Model T, Henry Ford built his ‘quadracycle’ in a gardening shed, and long before Thomas Edison developed the commercial light bulb, British scientist Warren de la Rue enclosed a coiled platinum filament in a vacuum tube, which is still the blingy-est way anyone has ever tried to light a room. So too did we, the co-creators of Carpool DeVille get our start in putting hot tubs into General Motors products in another time and place, and likewise do we owe much credit to people that gave their creative energy, their spare time, and their student loan money to this first prime mover: The Carpool Mark 1

Briefly: While we were engineering undergrads at McMaster University, this idiot skipped out on his sublet in my student domicile, but in his wake, abandoned a 1982 Chevy Malibu in the driveway. Over a keg of beer, someone joked that the car should be turned into a hot tub. It was the sort of ambition that is supposed to be discarded as soon as the next day’s hangover reveals its impracticality, but we were too young, too brazen, too determined to find a reason not to go to class to let go of what seemed to me then to be a slam-dunk of an idea. Why don’t we turn this car into a hot tub? I got down to work, and before long, friends got wind of what I was doing and offered to help. The rest, as they say, is history, and history best told in pictures with flippant captions. Enjoy!

1982 Chevy Malibu: The epitome of malaise in domestic automotive design.
We didn't chose the car; the car chose us, and it came with a roof, which was dispensed with...
...thusly.
Are we ever gonna miss that windshield? Naw...
At this stage of the construction, all hot tub cars look the same.
I don't think we knew what we were doing, but that was not going to stop us.
In this scene, scrap metal has been carriage bolted into place, and plywood installed as backing. Someone stole some carbon fibre matte from ... somewhere ... we'll start with that.
Eventually defaulted to the more readily available glass-fibre, from a University lab dumpster this time. Looks so comfy. I can't wait to lay my bare skin against it.
In the absence of a facility to house this project, we will stick to summer months, and the backyard...
... where - clearly - amazing things were made to happen.
Because it had to be tried, this photo shows large diameter coolant lines being used to circulate the tub water through the engine block. Epic, epic fail.
Inside this black box, miracles of the laws of thermodynamics unfolded, and cleanly warmed the tub using waste heat from the engine.
Wheel-well delivery system. A pool pump was installed in the trunk.
The stock V6 was always a piece of garbage. Removal was its fate.
That's a 230 cu-in in-line six from the mid-sixties hooked up to the '82 transmission. And that's also Phil.
In it goes.
Let's get the rear-view mirror back on, and establish some ground rules.
Hot Tub Car Party (typ.)
A Carpool for all seasons.
"Some day we should see how fast this thing can go. Some day... not now though."


The Legend of El Presidente

There are ghosts, they say, of carpools past, and carpools that never were. The sacred, shifting mists of memories and myths tell this story...

Picture
Some time around 2005, after a life long with adventure, mishaps and glories, Carpool Mk1 expired. No one knows for certain where it ended up, though rumours abound: It's in a warehouse of the Museum of Civilisation in Hull, Quebec... It's at the bottom of Hamilton Harbour... It's been converted into a flower box on E. Stanley Avenue in Vancouver... We may never know. We should never know. However, after its demise, the hole left by its rich existence demanded to be filled, and in the spirit of these sorts of things, it demanded to be filled by something better. And something.... bigger.

Back in the day, if you have a Chevrolet and you were looking to upgrade, tradition dictated that you consider maybe an Oldsmobile or - if life had been good to you - a Cadillac.

The Carpool DeVille: 1969 Cadillac DeVille, 472 cubic inch V8 and custom 370 gallon hot tub.