REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Tuesday, March 11, 2008

AUSTRALIA’S first V8-powered bar stool was built on the Gold Coast.

A bunch of mates who called themselves the SOF (Silly Old Farts) Club decided to construct the motorised stool after one of them got the idea in Las Vegas.

The group, which included a panelbeater, television electrician and mechanic, spent a month putting the machine together from parts ordered from the United States.

The bar stool had a 502 cubic inch V8 engine, could travel at 40km/h, spun at 5000 revs a minute and developed 520 horsepower.

Panelbeater Kit Anderson said they got the V8 bar stool going for the first time just days earlier.

“When we got it we couldn’t wait (to assemble it) because we’d been waiting since November last year,” he said.

“It goes pretty quick and you’ve only got that steering wheel to hang on to.”

Mr Anderson said originally he wasn’t going to tell his mates about the idea.

“I was going to do it as a surprise but I just couldn’t keep my trap shut … I let the cat out of the bag.”

The motoring enthusiast said he bought most of the parts for $7000 but the same kind of machine was sold in the US, for $13,000.

“You can’t use it as a vehicle or anything like that, it’s just for demonstration,” he said.

In the US, the powered bar stools have evolved into racing machines and many bar stool clubs have taken off.

Mr Anderson said the bar stool had already received a lot of interest and they planned to take it to Bathurst and Indy that year.