The Drivetribe team based in the UK has shared a video featuring an amazing 54-year-old Land Rover running on coal and hot steam.
The car is lovingly called ‘Mildred’ by its creator, Frank Rothwell, who built it out of pure curiosity. He knew that such engines had only even been installed on agricultural machinery and wanted to see if he could convert any regular production car to steam power as well.
Rothwell began by measuring the engine bay and its components and building a cardboard mock-up of the car he intended to build, to make sure that everything fitted. He had to say goodbye to the front axle differential and AWD in the process, but the result still looks like it was worth the trouble.
The driver can throw coals into the furnace straight from the driver’s seat, and the only pedal remaining is the brake. A dedicated level on the dashboard can be used to adjust the speed, but you probably won’t be going any faster than 20 km/h (12.5 miles per hour).
Our personal favorite thing about the unhinged build is that it is actually street-legal in the UK.
A similarly converted Jeep Wrangler built in Pennsylvania went up on sale in late 2018 armed with a 140-PS (137-hp / 104-kW) engine. It had only 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) of driving range.