Homegrown: Teenager’s snowmobile-powered cyclecar

Welcome to Homegrown—a limited series about homebuilt cars and the ingenuity of their visionary creators. Know a car and builder that might fit the bill? Send us an email to tips@hagerty.com with the subject line HOMEGROWN. Read about more Homegrown creations here. —Ed.

The concoctions we cover in our Homegrown feature series are usually the products of simmering adulthood creativity, constructed by individuals with superfluous time and money on their hands. But, as the cliché goes, for every rule there is an exception: The “car” depicted here began as 14-year-old Deacon Fancher’s sketches. It subsequently took shape over five years of effort between Fancher and his grandpa, Bill Spadafora, aka Popops.

Deacon, now 19, is a sophomore at Oakland University in Auburn Hills, Michigan, enrolled in journalism and film studies. He not only dreams about constructing cars, he hopes to someday write about them. (Please don’t hold that against him.) His other fantasy is to add bodywork, lighting, and the equipment that will make his car eligible for plates and street driving.

The term that best fits Deacon’s vehicle is cyclecar, reflecting that it is a motorcycle/car tweener with open wheels. The cyclecar’s brief moment of glory occurred in the 1910s and early ‘20s before the versatile Ford Model T booted them in automotive history’s ditch.

Deacon explains, “To get my project rolling, I bolted an 8.5-horsepower Honda single-cylinder engine and CVT from a snowmobile in the back of a steel-tubing spaceframe bent and welded by Popops in his garage. Grandpa is retired from an engineering career at GM, Bosch, Dana, and BAE in the Detroit area so he brings the expertise I lack to this project.

“Our wheelbase is 86 inches, track widths are 49 inches, overall length is about 11 feet. While the original idea was seating for two, there’s not going to be room for a passenger once I add a shifter and the necessary control pedals.

“Various chassis parts including the rack-and-pinion steering gear, brakes, and wheel hubs came from a Yamaha Rhino 700 side-by-side utility vehicle. Our control arm suspension system is homemade from steel tubing. Here, grandpa used Suspension Analyzer on screen to refine the geometry. The Factory Spec spring-shock units were purchased new via Amazon.

“I admire pre-war cars so we selected Ford Model A wire wheels fitted with Universal 19-inch bias-ply tires. Popops machined the adapters necessary to bolt these wheels to our Yamaha hubs. So far, our investment is about $2800 just for parts. My car runs, drives, and draws smiles wherever we take it. I belong to Oakland U’s Golden Grizzlies Formula SAE racing team so there is ample advice concerning what to do next.

“A 95-horsepower 1100-cc four-cylinder engine and five-speed transmission from a Yamaha Maxim XJ motorcycle are already in hand to add speed. My car’s curb weight is below 1000 pounds so excellent acceleration and decent cornering are assured.

“We’re just starting to think about bodywork. Naturally my SAE team members suggest using molded carbon-fiber panels which would require lots of learning on my part. More realistic options are fiberglass, aluminum, and canvas.

“The current John Deere bucket seat will definitely be replaced by something with a lower hip position to drop the top of my head well below the current 4-foot-tall upper frame loop.

“I feel very lucky on two counts—my family totally supports this fantasy and working elbow-to-elbow with Popops has been amazing fun. Every break I get from school gives us the chance to advance our project another step.”

While it hasn’t been Hagerty’s habit to cover Homegrown builds in progress, with installment reports, that’s precisely what we’re up to here. We’re not only anxious to see Deacon’s car finished, we’re hoping to be near the head of the line for a test drive.

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