vintage car cut vertically in half fully functions as street vehicle with exposed parts & interior

Old vehicle customized as car cut in half, vertically

Custom car shop collective Garage 54 finds an abandoned and beaten-up small-engined car and decides to cut and slice the car design in half with a power tool to see it if will still function to give their viewers some good old laugh. Owner Vladislav Barashenkov leads the customization of the old car with his Garage 54 team and together, they thoroughly slice the car in half, vertically.

The concept might not be too foreign given the recent horizontally sliced Fiat Panda, so low that the driver needs to crawl into the vehicle to drive it. This time, Barashenko and Garage 54 take a step further by also slicing the seats, car frame, and parts of the engine, reattaching the wheels to still make the vehicle four-wheeled and well-balanced.

Everything is visible in the custom car cut in half vertically by Garage 54 and Vladislav Barashenkov (well, depending on which side the viewer is looking). On one side, the car appears normal, giving a sense that the vehicle may have a semi-untidy owner by the way it looks unwashed and worn out. On the other side, everything is exposed, from the engine and car parts trying not to burst and spill out of their makeshift home down to the car seats, with their sponge-yellow foam peeking through the leather material.

video stills by Garage 54 via Youtube

Garage 54 tests car vertically sliced in half

After producing a car vertically cut in half, Garage 54 takes their custom vehicle for a test ride with Vladislav Barashenkov as the driver. He cruises around his town, soaking in the humid and polluted air with his open-air car concept. The exhaust pipe consistently blows out smoke, and the whirring and rhythmic sound of the engine is accompanied by the noise of the car parts, reminiscent of the bygone days of vintage vehicles.

As Vladislav Barashenkov takes a break from driving, he swings by a gasoline station to fill up his tank, catching the attention of the people present in the location. He does not pop the tank’s lid. Instead, he pumps the gas into the car by sliding the nozzle at the exposed rear part where the tank of the custom car cut vertically in half is positioned. After filling it up, occasionally answering the questions and observations of the people around him, he settles back into the car and continues driving around town.

He speeds through the road, fearlessly placing the custom car between other cars on the road, and films the fully functional car sliced vertically in half. The four wheels are intact, can navigate through the bumps on the road, and make smooth left and right turns using the vintage steering wheel that came with the beaten-up car. At one point, Vladislav Barashenkov stops driving to take a break, exhales after a semi-long drive, and says that it is really hot inside the car – like really hot. Viewers might just not wonder why.

Vladislav Barashenkov, owner of Garage 54, drives his custom car vertically cut in half