Live Out Your Wildest Mario Kart Dreams With This $4,500 Street-Legal Racing Kart
Who needs a kart track when the world is your road course?
Taking a kart for a spin on public roads is a fantasy of pretty much any kart owner—it was mine before my family got rid of its old Briggs & Stratton-powered Tony kart. Sure, the law doesn't permit it in most of the United States, but over in Europe—where you can register tiny, low-speed vehicles as microcars—loopholes allow for some karts to be made street-legal, including this Kreidler F-Kart 100 listed for sale on German eBay.
This F-Kart—wherein F is believed to stand for Fahrzeug, German for "vehicle"—is equipped with a 96-cc gas engine that makes just shy of eight horsepower according to Data Bikes. Those of you who watch too much 1320Video might think that sounds like far too little to have fun, but a 6.5-horsepower Harbor Freight engine can do wonders in a pickup truck, so something with about 20 percent more power and a fraction as much weight to lug around is sure to be a delight.
Not much information about these karts is available in English, though from what we can gather from a photo of an F-Kart 100's speedometer, they appear to be capable of nearly 40 mph. That makes them about as quick as any four-stroke rental karts you can find in any big city, though being equipped with turn signals, mirrors, and tubular metal bumpers (that may as well just be cowcatchers for pedestrians), these F-Karts can be driven on more than just a track, and at least one business in Tokyo rents them out to tourists—though the Mario Kart costumes are no longer offered after a lawsuit from Nintendo.
If a street-legal kart is as tempting to you as it is anyone with a pulse, the blue one you see up top here is, again, listed for sale in Germany for 4,200 euro, or about $4,500. That's a pretty penny for a vehicle without suspension, meaning a drive down a cobblestone street will leave you needing to see a chiropractor, and its listed mileage of 6,540 miles (10,525 km) is a heck of a lot for a kart—parts of it are probably pretty worn out. But now that Kreidler F-Karts are said to be discontinued and increasing in value, this F-Kart 100 may be a wise buy. Just don't count on the Department of Transportation to honor its European registration if you have it shipped stateside.
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